Cinema Releases - Uncle Boonmee who can recall his past lives

Uncle Boonmee who can recall his past lives

Released

Winner of the 2010 Palme d'Or Cannes Film Festival.

The latest film from the director of Syndromes and a Century, Tropical Malady and Blissfully Yours has propelled Apichatpong Weerasethakul into the spotlight.

Uncle Boonmee has chosen to spend his final days surrounded by his loved ones in the remote forest, an important place from his childhood and, he believes, the possible location of his former existences. Surprisingly, the ghost of his deceased wife appears to care for him, and the spirit of his long lost son returns. Contemplating the reasons for his illness, Boonmee treks through the jungle with his family to a mysterious hilltop cave -- the birthplace of his first life...

Eerie, poetic and masterful, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives creates an enchanted world where fauna and flora converge to convey a magical, sublime atmosphere.

Apichatpong Weerasethakul Director

Filmography Selected

Apichatpong Weerasethakul was born in Bangkok (1970) and grew up in Khon Kaen, north-eastern Thailand. He started making films and video shorts in 1994 and completed his first feature in 2000. He has also mounted exhibitions and installations in many countries since 1998. Often non-linear, his works link with memory, invoked in subtle ways personal politics and social issues. Working independently of the Thai commercial film industry, he devotes himself to promoting experimental and independent filmmaking through his company Kick the Machine Films, founded in 1999. Kick the Machine has produced all his feature films. In 2008, he embarked on the Primitive Project, a multi-platform work of which Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall his Past Lives is part. In 2009, he and his work were the subject of a monograph published by the Austrian Film Museum.

His art projects and feature films have won him widespread recognition and numerous festival prizes, including three prizes from the Cannes Film Festival. Blissfully Yours won the A Certain Regard Prize in 2002 and Tropical Malady won the Official Competition Jury Prize in 2004 and in 2010 Uncle Boonmee who can recall his past lives won the Palme d'Or. His acclaimed 2006 feature, Syndromes and a Century, was the first Thai film to be selected for competition at the Venice Film Festival and was acclaimed in a number of international polls as one of the best films of the last decade.

He lives and works in Chiangmai, Thailand. He is currently preparing his next project on the filmmaker and celebrated author Donald Richie.

FEATURE FILMS

2010 Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Lung Boonmee Raluek Chat)

2006 Syndromes and a Century (Sang Sattawat)

2004 Tropical Malady (Sud Pralad)

2003 The Adventure of Iron Pussy (Huajai Toranong)

2002 Blissfully Yours (Sud Sanaeha)

2000 Mysterious Object at Noon (Dokfar Nai Meu Marn)

SELECTED SHORTS

2009 A Letter to Uncle Boonmee

2008 Vampire/ Mobile Men

2007 Luminous People