Apichatpong Weerasethakul

Apichatpong Weerasethakul was born in Bangkok, raised in Khon Kaen. He studied architecture at Khon Kaen University and later received an MFA in filmmaking from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He started making films and videos in 1994 and has become an independent film producer in Thailand. In 1999, Weerasethakul started his own production company Kick the Machine, and made his first feature film Mysterious Object at Noon in the following year. The artist’s unique cinematic style was already manifest in this early work, which fused the documentary with the fictional, the journalistic with the folkloric, the ghostly with the sci-fi, sensitively responding to political and social issues through a non-linear, mismatched narrative. Vapour takes place at Toongha village in Mae Ram district that has been Apichatpong’s home for the past eight years. The village is one of several areas in the country that are plagued with land management issues. For the past sixty years, it has been a battleground between the people and the state. The clouds descend onto a village and engulf it for a day. They touch the roof tiles, the beds, the chairs, the carpets, the grass, and the bodies, infecting everything with the fever of white stupor.