HIFF Presents... SCREENING: By the Time it Gets Dark

A film director interviews a former student activist and survivor of the 1976 Thammasat University massacre. The figure of a young woman shape-shifts from a waitress, to a cleaner, to a monk. A pop star croons the phrase “Please don’t lie to me” during the production of a sappy music video. With her celebrated second feature, Anocha Suwichakornpong presents a bold and deeply humanistic mosaic of modern day Thailand that explores the question of the role of cinema in the representation of a nation’s historical trauma. Adopting the elusive form of a dream or faded memory, By the Time It Gets Dark is a reflection of the filmmaker’s creative ingenuity under a repressive political climate as much as it is a profound expression of a new cinematic paradigm.

"Occasionally dizzying, By the Time it Gets Dark is never didactic and through her bold approach to the medium Anocha Suwichakornpong offers audiences a thrilling glimpse of the possibilities of cinema."

— Kate Taylor BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL

“This is a cinema that is far from the idea of the documentary, a cinema that exalts its proper essence: imagination.”

— Filmexplorer

A Q+A session with Anocha will follow the screening