IFFR KINO #39: Syndromes and a Century

We’re back on the big screen for IFFR KINO Season 7, with a screening every first Wednesday of the month until summer. Next up, on 6 April, is Syndromes and a Century by Apichatpong Weerasethakul. First screened at the festival in 2007, the film was shot by cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, our IFFR 2022 Robby Müller Award recipient.

Apichatpong Weerasethakul, a master in cross-linking modern film forms with mythical fantasies, also displays an ability to tell stories through multiple spaces with Syndromes and a Century. In addition to the two main characters, the film features two main locations. The first part of the film takes place during the filmmaker’s idealised youth, even though the protagonist is based on his mother as she was before he was born.

The protagonist in the second part was inspired by Weerasethakul’s father. Although, it would perhaps be more apt to describe the story as being told by the locations rather than the characters. Firstly, there is the comfortable, sunny and verdant environment of the hospital of the female psychiatrist Toey (the mother). For this the filmmaker returned to his childhood home of Khon Kaen, a city in northeast Thailand – closer to the countryside of Laos than to Bangkok. He allowed the pastoral surroundings to shape the tone of these almost jovial sketches.

In the second part, this pleasantly nostalgic environment is replaced with a bleak hospital in present-day Bangkok. These different surroundings do not just affect the look of the film, the tone and approach become equally alienating. Within Weerasethatkul’s spatial logic it is then of course no surprise that the film ends far past the present-day, with a rather frightening image of the future. 

Wednesday 6 April, 19:00, KINO Rotterdam

Get your tickets via KINO Rotterdam