Eternity

Although it’s rooted in very personal memories, Eternity is not at all the usual autobiographical coming-of-age movie. Sivaroj Kongsakul (who photographed the featurette Worldly Desires for Apichatpong and has worked as assistant to Pen-ek, Aditya and Wisit) was inspired to make it by the premature death of his own father, and he devotes most of the running-time to the stories he heard from his mother, a schoolteacher, about the rural courtship that took place before he was born. Wit, the man, was born and raised in a village, and had to persuade his girlfriend Koi that she’d be happy living in the countryside. He did all the traditional things – brought her to meet his parents, took her on an excursion to the nearest Buddhist temple, showed her the places he loved as a boy – and she finally succumbed.

These exquisite scenes are bookended by a prologue showing Wit’s ghost revisiting the house and the land he grew up in (there’s a Thai belief that the recently deceased return after three days) and an epilogue showing Koi raising the two children as a widow. This serene vision of love and loss won a Rotterdam Tiger Award.