Suwichakornpong (By the Time It Gets Dark, LFF 2016) and Rivers (The Sky Trembles and the Earth Is Afraid and the Two Eyes Are Not Brothers, LFF 2015) merge their unique cinematic languages across reality and folklore in South Thailand, creating a stylish meditation on the eponymous tourist town. They reunite with Suwichakornpong’s celebrated Hong Kong cinematographer Ming-Kai Leung and River’s research-focused experimental sonic artist Ernst Karel for the film’s rich sound design. A cast of real and imagined characters unreliably narrate your journey from fertility caves on paradise beaches to a bat-filled abandoned cinema. Then there’s an advertisement shoot by Oliver Laxe (Fire Will Come, in this year’s Dare strand), a secluded former boxing champion and flashes of the stunning coastal landscape’s pre-historic past. Together, the artists create an absorbing and playful portrait of a people, place and time that floats across fiction and reality, leaving haunting vignettes on the legacy of our age.

*Please note that free Red Membership tickets are not available for the BFI's London Film Festival. 

Get your tickets for the 2019 BFI London Film Festival in partnership with American Express from 12 September at bfi.org.uk/lff or call 020 7928 3232 (10:00 – 20:30 daily).