So rather than anything more metaphysical, I ask him about Gattaca, the 1997 film with Jude Law and Ethan Hawke and the outlier on the list of his favourite movies I found.
I suddenly worry that I, too, am expecting Apichatpong to be some sort of mystic. As though his eyes should be forever fixed on a loftier faraway that none of us mere mortals can glimpse, except briefly, when huge flowers of wonder blossom suddenly in our heads while watching Cemetery of Splendour in a packed press screening.
It's as though Apichatpong, being the purveyor of such otherworldly reveries as Tropical Malady, Syndromes and a Century and Palme d'Or winner Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, is somehow expected to be not quite of this world himself.
A ripple of something like disbelief went around the hall when he mentioned Netflix. So did his hat-tips to ET and Close Encounters of the Third Kind ("Spielberg was God, for a small town in Thailand") and his affinity for 70s disaster movies. The Star Wars reference caught everyone off-guard during his Masterclass event. In here, there are talking baboons, sleeping soldiers, ghosts and goddesses, doctors swigging hooch from stashes hidden in prosthetic legs and dead sons turned into furry, red-eyed demons that, a delighted Apichatpong claims, are often likened to Chewbacca. Everything feels new and clean and spaciously empty, except this room, which I'm fanciful enough to imagine teeming with a shared lexicon of imagery and ideas. It is easy to feel dislocated and rootless here: a few miles away the skeleton scaffolds of future World Cup stadiums rear up from shifting sands, and outside, the bright paving stones of the already immaculate souk are being scrubbed of the last few hours of history once again. We are both at Qumra, a week-long industry event held annually in the Qatari capital, at which Apichatpong is one of 2018's attending ‘masters’. That's what it feels like to find myself sitting across from Apichatpong Weerasethakul one afternoon in the thick-carpeted quiet of a Doha hotel. Could Ishak be next on the list, or is he the man responsible? Tracking down his more ‘unsavoury’ allies, Serena is shocked to encounter a familiar face: that of her grieving ex-partner, former Malaysian ICD officer Megat Jamil (Bront Palarae).It's a strange thing to meet a stranger whose dreams you've dreamed. As Serena and Heri work together to catch the killer, their inquiries lead them to industrialist/kingpin Datuk Ishak Hassan (Wan Hanafi Su), whose prominent family and known associates all have some connection to the victims. Seeking answers, Heri finds a way to insert himself into the Malaysian investigation. Meanwhile, in Jakarta, for ICD Lieutenant Heriyanto Salim (Ario Bayu), the case turns personal when his brother is found murdered in similar circumstances. Called in to investigate, Singaporean International Crimes Division (ICD) officer Serena Teo (Rebecca Lim) takes charge of a case across the border where a family has been slaughtered aboard a luxury yacht in Johor.
THAI GAY MOVIES ONLINE SERIES
A series of brutal murders, each sharing a signature MO, takes place across Malaysia and Indonesia.