POP AYE

Kirsten Tan's Sundance award-winning debut is the warm and ever-so-strange tale of an architect, his elephant and 300 miles of mid-life crisis.

Thana is a man on the edge. Overlooked at work, ignored by his wife and slumping into middle age, his world is fast becoming a place of daily drudgery and familiar humiliations. But when he recognises a street elephant called Popeye as the one he grew up with in his tiny northern village, he buys it on the spot and starts walking the great beast home.

Produced by Anthony Chen (MIFF 2013's Ilo Ilo, for which he won the Caméra d'Or at Cannes) and winner of the Special Jury Award for Screenwriting at the Sundance Film Festival, Pop Aye is the knowing and gently surreal feature film debut from writer/director Kirsten Tan. Fuelled by an irrepressible dynamic between co-stars Thaneth Warakulnukroh and Bong, the elephant, it is a film of sly humour and unexpected pathos that proves one will never be found without the other.

'A tender and sharply etched journey … Loneliness, alienation, the ache of nostalgia and the everyday absurdity of life infuse every encounter.' – Hollywood Reporter