Butterfly and Flowers

The criminals in this film are teenagers, and their crimes (smuggling rice on cross-border trains into Malaysia) are motivated by need, not greed; the story's element of crime is there to bring moral ambiguities into sharper focus. Huyan (Suriya Yaovasang, a brilliantly cast non-professional) is a promising pupil forced to drop out of school when his widower father's meagre income dries up; the smuggling trade offers him lessons in survival, friendship and rivalry. Focusing on the Muslim minority in Thailand's south, the film is an extraordinary cross between neo-realism and sweet-but-unsentimental romanticism. It adds up to a remarkably fresh account of both endemic regional problems (poverty, education, social welfare, crime) and one boy's rite of passage. Never a box-office success, it stands as one of the most innovative and achieved Thai films ever - and as a landmark in South-East Asian cinema as a whole. (T.R.)