Koraphat Cheeradit’s short films Yesterday Is Another Day and Landscape of Us on Fire will be shown at this year’s Isan Creative Festival (เทศกาลอีสานสร้างสรรค์), being held at Khon Kaen between 29th June and 7th July. The festival’s theme is Proud of Isan (สะออนเด้).
Yesterday Is Another Day and Landscape of Us on Fire are both part of the Short Film Short Cut programme, taking place from 24th to 30th June as a prelude to the main festival. The films will be shown on a bus travelling around the city, with Yesterday Is Another Day being screened on 27th June followed by Landscape of Us on Fire on the following day.
Yesterday Is Another Day and Landscape of Us on Fire are both part of the Short Film Short Cut programme, taking place from 24th to 30th June as a prelude to the main festival. The films will be shown on a bus travelling around the city, with Yesterday Is Another Day being screened on 27th June followed by Landscape of Us on Fire on the following day.
Yesterday Is Another Day
In Yesterday Is Another Day, a high school student plays hooky and meets his girlfriend in a woodland. They take a walk, and joke about their future together, seemingly without a care in the world. But there are ominous signs of impending threats: they find a discarded handgun, and Koraphat inserts shots of a JCB digging up the forest.
Eventually, we learn that the student is being charged with lèse-majesté, merely for sharing Facebook posts. His court hearing is the following day, and he is likely to be jailed. (The film doesn’t state directly that he’s facing royal defamation charges, though it’s clear from the couple’s conversation: he explains that the sentence is three years per offence, which is the minimum jail term for lèse-majesté.)
The prospect of criminal charges for posting on social media is a reality for dozens of people in Thailand today, many of whom are students. As the boy in Koraphat’s film says to his girlfriend, he has to face changing from “being a teenager to being a prisoner.” The film is a powerful and moving reminder of the severe consequences of lèse-majesté, and what it must feel like to be criminalised at a young age for expressing opinions online.
Yesterday Is Another Day was previously shown at the Chiang Mai Film Festival (เทศกาลหนังแห่งเมืองเชียงใหม่) — twice — and at Wildtype 2023, and in the Short Film Marathon (หนังสั้นมาราธอน). It was first screened in Silpakorn University’s programme The Political Wanderer.
Eventually, we learn that the student is being charged with lèse-majesté, merely for sharing Facebook posts. His court hearing is the following day, and he is likely to be jailed. (The film doesn’t state directly that he’s facing royal defamation charges, though it’s clear from the couple’s conversation: he explains that the sentence is three years per offence, which is the minimum jail term for lèse-majesté.)
The prospect of criminal charges for posting on social media is a reality for dozens of people in Thailand today, many of whom are students. As the boy in Koraphat’s film says to his girlfriend, he has to face changing from “being a teenager to being a prisoner.” The film is a powerful and moving reminder of the severe consequences of lèse-majesté, and what it must feel like to be criminalised at a young age for expressing opinions online.
Yesterday Is Another Day was previously shown at the Chiang Mai Film Festival (เทศกาลหนังแห่งเมืองเชียงใหม่) — twice — and at Wildtype 2023, and in the Short Film Marathon (หนังสั้นมาราธอน). It was first screened in Silpakorn University’s programme The Political Wanderer.
Landscape of Us on Fire
Landscape of Us on Fire challenges the taboo against depicting the sexual desires of monks. In the film, a novice monk hires a prostitute, and its poster image — of the monk’s hand on the young prostitute’s back — recalls a shot in Kanittha Kwunyoo’s previously banned film Karma (อาปัติ). (Thai Cinema Uncensored discusses the representation of monks in Thai films in much more detail.)