Apichatpong Weerasethakul is recognised as one of the most original voices in contemporary cinema. His feature films, short films, installations, and live performances have won him widespread international recognition and numerous awards, including the Cannes Palme d’Or in 2010 with Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives. He has won the Cannes Competition Jury Prize for both Memoria in 2021 and for Tropical Malady in 2004, and Blissfully Yours won the Cannes Un Certain Regard Award in 2002. Syndromes and a Century (2006) was recognised as one of the best films of the last decade in several 2010 polls. Mysterious Object at Noon (2000), his first feature, has been restored by Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Foundation.
Born in Bangkok, Apichatpong grew up in Khon Kaen in north-eastern Thailand. He began 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 and is now recognised as a major international visual artist. His art prized include the Sharjah Biennial Prize (2013), the prestigious Yanghyun Art Prize (2014) in South Korea, and the Artes Mundi Award (2019).
Lyrical and often fascinatingly mysterious, his film works are non-linear, dealing with memory and in subtle ways invoking 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, which also produces all his films. His installations have included the multi-screen project Primitive (2009), acquired for major museum collections (including Tate Modern and Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris), a major installation for the 2012 Kassel Documenta, and most recently the film installations Fireworks (Archive) (2014), Invisibility (2016), and Constellations (2018).
In September 2015, the Asian Arts Theatre, based in South Korea, commissioned his first live performance work Fever Room, designed to compliment their presentation of Cemetery of Splendour. Since then Fever Room has been successfully presented in Brussels, Berlin, Yokohama, Singapore, Taipei, and other international cities, and at the Festival d’Automne in France.
In 2022, Tropical Malady was ranked the 62nd greatest film of all time in the Sight & Sound directors’ poll and 95th in their critics’ poll. In 2016, it was ranked the 6th greatest LGBT film of all time in the British Film Institute poll.
