From Thailand's Rural Reaches to the Palme d'Or

In Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul tells the story of a man dying of kidney failure who is visited by the ghosts of his dead wife and long-lost son. He regards his suffering as karma for "killing too many communists"—a nod to the area's deadly anticommunist military campaign from the 1960s to the 1980s. Shot in 16mm, the film, which won the Palme d'Or at Cannes in May, incorporates elements of magical realism, science fiction, and subtle social commentary to explore Thai identity and official government recognition of repressive policies. "It is about loss of memory [and the classic] cinema that I love," says Weerasethakul.

For the director, 40, film has become not just a medium but a metaphor for Thai society. His 20 short and feature-length films are all set in Thailand and evoke a dreamlike atmosphere while portraying the harsh realities that authorities prefer to gloss over—such as doctors who drink on the job, as depicted in his 2007 Syndromes and a Century. "It's enormously important that he's giving a voice to many different classes of people, but he's not doing that in a propagandizing way," says Chris Dercon, who will take over as director of London's Tate Modern in 2011. "He's doing it in a very poetic way. The public can find their own messages."

Raised in the northern Thai city of Khon Kaen, where his parents were doctors, Weerasethakul credits a grade-school teacher for encouraging his interest in art. "He gave us free time and lots of creative materials to play with," he recalls. After finishing an architecture degree from the local university in 1994, he attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, receiving his M.F.A. in film in 1997. In the U.S., where he stuffed envelopes to make money, he experienced the same kind of freedom he enjoyed in elementary school—"[but] this time, freedom of cinema," he says.

Freedom of cinema has often eluded him in Thailand. When he made Syndromes and a Century, a tribute to his parents' courtship, authorities ordered him, oddly, to cut scenes of a monk playing guitar, doctors boozing at a hospital, and a doctor making out with his girlfriend—changes he unsuccessfully fought for two years. Frustrated, Weerasethakul began work on Uncle Boonmee, part of a larger multimedia project called Primitive, commissioned by a group of museums including Munich's Haus der Kunst, where Dercon is currently the director. The title refers to "going back to when we lived in caves," as well as "how we live here in Thailand, politically [and] psychologically," says Weerasethakul.

One of the other Primitive works is an 11-minute video called Phantoms of Nabua, which won South Korea's Asia Art Award in April, just as red-shirted antigovernment protesters invaded the Thai Parliament. The film, made in 2009, shows youths kicking around a burning football at night. "The story of Nabua undeniably has echoes of the current political turmoil in Thailand," Weerasethakul wrote in his artist's note, referring to the wide-scale torture, extrajudicial killings, and rape that took place in Nabua during the Thai military's anticommunist campaign. "Institutions involved in those events of the past, along with new ones, are the key players in the ongoing chaos. Just as in the past, they manipulate the public psyche, instilling it with faith and fear."

But Weerasethakul insists he is not a political filmmaker. "I don't think of myself as an activist," he says. "Generally I am quite shy. But when it comes to the topic of cinema censorship, I have to speak out." Thai authorities have allowed screenings of Uncle Boonmee, thanks mostly to its Cannes-winning cachet. It has been playing to full houses in one upscale Bangkok cinema. Without the prize, however, Uncle Boonmee might well have been banned. When the filmmaker recently made a plea for freedom of expression at a government banquet in his honor, the MC neglected to mention it in his English translation for the diplomats present. "So I translated my message myself," he says.