Event info

Cemetery of Splendour // Rak ti Khon Kaen

Apichatpong Weerasethakul

Thailand 2015

122 mín

'Few filmmakers this side of David Lynch are as adept or intuitive as Apichatpong Weerasethakul when it comes to appropriating the language of dreams' says a Variety critic. CEMETERY OF SPLENDOUR tells the story of Jenjira, a volunteer at a small clinic that cares for soldiers suffering from a mysterious sleeping illness. Jen becomes especially drawn to a certain patient, the handsome young Itt, and with the help of Keng, the hospital psychic, she attempts to probe his strange world of dreams. A sublime fusion of history, memory, socio-political allegory, and mysticism, this film creates an enchanted world where the present coexists with the past, dreams are real, and magic emerges from the mundane. CEMETARY OF SPLENDOUR was shown at the Un Certain Regard program at Cannes and Weerasethakul's earlier film, UNCLE BOONMEE WHO CAN RECALL HIS PAST LIVES, received the Palme d'Or, the festivals main prize in 2010.

Apichatpong Weerasethakul is a Thai indie director, born in 1970 in Bangkok and raised in Kohn Kaen in North-Thailand. He got his BA in architecture from Kohn Kaen Univesity in 1994 but a year earlier he directed his first short BULLET. He then attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and received a master's degree in filmmaking in 1997. Weerasethakul has since celebrated a very successful directing career. His first feature, BLISSFULLY YOURS (2002) received the Un Certain Regard prize at Cannes and two years later TROPICAL MALADY (2004) got the festival's Jury Prize. In 2010, Weerasathakul received the Cannes main prize, Palme d'Or, for the masterpiece UNCLE BOONMEE WHO CAN RECALL HIS PAST LIVES. CEMETERY OF SPLENDOUR is his eight feature film.