This film was released 1st December 2010, and is no longer screening.

Winning this year’s Cannes Palme d’Or marked the final confirmation of longtime critics’ favourite Apichatpong Weerasethakul among world cinema’s most mesmerising talents.’ A beautiful, strange dream’ was jury president Tim Burton’s take on the Thai auteur’s latest offering, in which a dying farmer comes to terms with the freedom of passage between this world and the next, man and animal, body and spirit. For newcomers, the best advice is to embrace a cinematic realm of monkey ghosts, revenant family members, magical caves and talking catfish.

Given its enveloping sound mix, the lush Thai countryside and the camera’s slowly penetrating gaze, Weerasethakul’s highly personal fable is welcoming and hypnotic, unspooling with the surprising certitude of a Kubrick movie, yet encouraging each viewer to find their own meaning within. There’s a disarmingly firm line of political dissent here, but tenderness and spiritual openness perhaps remain the key to this pavilion of celluloid reverie. Dive in! (Notes by Trevor Johnston).