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Thai auteur, Sivaroj Kongsakul made his feature directorial debut with “Eternity,” which screened at festivals including Busan, Rotterdam and Hong Kong back in 2010. Having waited for over a decade, Kongsakul has chosen to entwine the fates of an old man, a little girl and a young soldier in his second feature, “Regretfully at Dawn.”
The new film is confirmed to premiere in the New Directors section at the San Sebastian festival and will follow that shortly after with an appearance xx in Busan International Film Festival in October.
The film is very different from “Eternity” and from Kongsakul’s recent TV work.
In a small province not far from Bangkok, the life of Yong Junjam (portrayed by Surachai Juntimatorn, who is better-known as a veteran Thai rock musician) at first seems typical of an old man. The traces of his past as a soldier are also evident. Even though he currently feels unwell, Yong spends every day with the dream of building a tree-house by himself, and is meanwhile raising an intelligent and lively niece who was abandoned by her parents. They live with Rambo his black dog, with peculiar eyes. When, one day, time seems to stop and the sun won’t rise any further, the man senses the coming of his death.
The producers are Pimpaka Towira (Thailand) and Weijie Lai (Singapore), from Extra Virgin and E&W Films, respectively. Diversion is handling world sales.
At project stage, the film was previously presented at various labs and co-production markets in Asia and Europe, including the Hubert Bals Fund for script development, the Cannes Fondation’s Residency program, La Fabrique Cinema and the now defunct SEAFIC. It received grant funding from the Singapore IMDA’s Southeast Asian Co-Production scheme.
Diversion
“The long journey I’ve taken with this film has led me to contemplate the various dimensions of my own feelings: reflecting on my post-adolescence years, the time that I can never return to, and my entrance into middle age, a period I now wish to tackle with more seriousness. Then there’s the reality of death: I saw death approaching everyone around me when the world encountered the plague called Covid-19. I also revisit my memories— scenes in my life where I lost someone dear to me forever, departures without goodbye. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about these things in the past 10 years. They swirl around in my thoughts and inevitably find their way into my creative process,” said Kongsakul. “The tree main characters of ‘Regretfully at Dawn’ are vessels for my memory of the past, records of the present and prophets of a future world in which I glimpse hopes and dreams.”
Kongsakul was one member of a trio of directors who filmed pan-Asian omnibus feature “Distance” in 2015. Much of his other work has been for the small screen.
These include: 2012 Korean remake series “Autumn in my Heart” which aired on Thailand’s True; 2015 series “Devil Lover,” which shot in Kitakyushu, Japan, and aired on Thailand’s GMM25; Thai series “Nyctophobia and “Two Pillows & a Lost Soul” for GMM Studios International. Most recently, he directed the glossy Netflix Thailand series “Master of the House.”
Watch the trailer here.
