BANGKOK — History, war, culture and social issues drawn from Southeast Asia will be portrayed through selected films screening for free this month.
Seven acclaimed films from seven ASEAN nations will show over five days in the SAC ASEAN Film Festival.
The fest opens with the premiere of “Forever Yours,” a gay Vietnamese romantic drama about three men in rural love triangle.
See a typical Chinese family in pre-independence Singapore in the heartwarming film “Long Long Time Ago.” An elderly woman travels across Indonesia’s Central Java to find the tomb of her husband, who died in that nation’s war for independence, in the award-winning “Ziarah: Tales of the Otherwords.”
Celebrated Filipino director Brillante Mendoza’s most recent work “Ma’ Rosa” will also show. It is a dramatized look at poverty, drugs and police corruption in Manila. The film’s lead, Jaclyn Jose, was Cannes’ best actress of 2016.
A Cambodian architect-turned-director takes audiences to “Dream Land,” which frankly talks about the exploding metropolis of Phnom Penh through an ambitious young real estate agent.
Taking 10 years to produce, Malaysian crime drama “Jagat” explores an Indian-Malaysian community in the early ‘90s through a 12-year-old boy and his relationships with his family, a former drug addict and a local gangster.
The festival closes with “The Road to Mandalay.” The Burmese drama sees two illegal Burmese migrants flee their country’s civil war to Thailand.
Admission if free. Thai and English subtitles will be provided. See the full film schedule and make sure to reserve a seat online.
The festival runs Aug. 19 to Aug. 23 at the Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn Anthropology Centre across the river in Bangkok’s Taling Chan district on Soi Borommaratchachonnani 39.
