BY THE TIME IT GETS DARK
'Suwichakornpong subtly uses fragmented images, identity slippage and ellipsis to dig for the core of contemporary Thai experience and ask profound questions about how memory, politics and cinema intersect.' – Sight & Sound
In 1976, as Thailand slipped back into the grip of military dictatorship, scores of student protesters at Thammasat University were gunned down by police and associated paramilitaries. Seen through the lens of an interview between a survivor of the massacre and a young filmmaker, this tragic episode is at the centre of director Anocha Suwichakornpong’s free-associative, at times wildly experimental expedition into her country’s past and present.
Winner of the top prize at the 2016 Thai National Film Association Awards, By the Time It Gets Dark is a mirror world of cascading realities, narrative detours, found footage and digital interference; a work that shows Suwichakornpong to be one of South-East Asian cinema’s most innovative contemporary voices.
'A swirl of startling, sensuously rendered transitions, identities sliding among characters, fictions cracking open to reveal still more fictions within.' – Film Comment
Director Anocha Suwichakornpong will be at both the sessions to introduce the film and take part in a post-screening Q&A.