Project Rijksakademie, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
26 Jan 2023, 19.30 – 22.00
Current guest resident Taiki Sakpisit will screen his 2021 feature film debut 'The Edge of Daybreak' at the Rijksakademie, followed by a Q&A moderated by curator and writer Julian Ross.
A family’s mental state reflects the troubled history of Thailand in Taiki Sakpisit’s doom-laden feature film debut. The oppression of the student uprisings in the 1970s and the 2006 military coup are the implicit historic anchors for an equal parts fluid and suffocating family chronicle marred by psychological trauma, violence and guilt complexes.
On the eve of a shift in political power, a woman is taken to a safe house, sharing a final meal with her husband before he is smuggled abroad. 30 years earlier, Ploy was a young girl in a coma after nearly drowning. Her father, a soldier, has been missing for three years and her mother is recovering from a nervous breakdown. Together with her lover, her husband’s younger brother, she relives the traumas of their youth. Impending doom and repression pervade monochrome shots of desolate, dilapidated locations with lanterns creating ghostly shadow theatre. The dark soundtrack, minimal cinematic action and slow tempo conjure up a hypnotic state. The characters seem imprisoned in emotional paralysis where past and present meld into a single, endless nightmare. A shadow crosses the sun: is it an omen, or will it awaken everyone?
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