Thai film picked by Cannes (The Bangkok Post)

By Kong Rithdee

Pen-ek Ratanaruang's seventh feature has become the only Thai film to be picked into the Official Selection of the upcoming 62nd Cannes Film Festival.

The festival, the most high-profile and most influential in the arthouse circuit, announced its selection yesterday in Paris. Pen-ek's film, called Nang Mai in Thai and Nymph in English, will be screened in the Un Certain Regard section, a category reserved for daring or unconventional works.

Cannes is famed for its exclusivity. Every year the committee select around 20 films for the top-tier In Competition section - the only Thai film in history to have entered this elite group is Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Tropical Malady in 2003. Then another 20 films are picked for Un Certain Regard, a sidebar programme featuring promising directors. These 40 "Official Selection" titles are picked from, it is said, over 1,500 films submitted to the festival.

This year Cannes Film Festival runs from May 13 to 24 in Cannes, the seaside resort town on the Mediterranean coast that has played host to the discovery of exciting, or in certain cases, important, cinema for 62 years.

Nang Mai stars Nopachai "Peter" Jayanama and Vanida "Kifsy" Termthanapon, singer of the sexy girl-group Girly Berry. They play a married couple who go camping in the forest, where the husband disappears after an encounter with a sad, strange tree.

The film was co-produced by Thai outfit Five Star Entertainment and international sales agent Fortissimo Films. One of the film's producers was Wouter Barendretch, a Dutchman who died in his Bangkok apartment earlier this month when he flew in to watch the early cut of the film. Nang Mai will be dedicated to the memory of Barendretch.

Pen-ek's previous film was Ploy, a marital drama that was also picked by the Directors' Fortnight section, another sidebar to the Cannes festival, in 2007.

Nang Mai is tentatively schedule to open in Thailand in late June or early July.