Apichat­pong Weerasethakul’s upcom­ing Memo­ria gets a big deal

Since the dawn of the mil­len­ni­um, film­mak­er Apichat­pong Weerasethakul (known affec­tion­ate­ly as ​“Joe” to peo­ple intim­i­dat­ed by his name’s many syl­la­bles) has been qui­et­ly mak­ing some of the most fas­ci­nat­ing films in the world from his cor­ner of Thai­land. But ear­ly reports from the set of his next fea­ture Memo­ria sug­gest that the nation­al film­mak­er may soon assume a more glob­al spotlight.

The Hol­ly­wood Reporter broke the news from the Amer­i­can Film Mar­ket indus­try con­fer­ence that Memo­ria has been picked up for a 2020 release by NEON, the dis­trib­u­tor cur­rent­ly turn­ing Par­a­site into a box-office hit in the Unit­ed States. Though Joe’s work has been defi­ant­ly uncom­mer­cial in the past, the scant details already revealed form a pic­ture of a film with wider appeal.

He’s leav­ing his home and his native lan­guage for the first time, shoot­ing in Colom­bia and in Eng­lish. In anoth­er first, he’s work­ing with a bona fide movie star with a house­hold name in the West, tap­ping Til­da Swin­ton for the lead role.

The cur­so­ry syn­op­sis pro­vid­ed as of now, how­ev­er, gives the impres­sion of a more typ­i­cal­ly oblique piece of work. Swin­ton plays an orchid hor­ti­cul­tur­al­ist vis­it­ing her sis­ter in Bogotá, where she makes the acquain­tance of a local musi­cian and a French archae­ol­o­gist work­ing on a project to con­struct a tun­nel bur­row­ing through the Andes moun­tains. The oth­er note, inscrutable but evi­dent­ly salient, is that Swinton’s char­ac­ter can­not sleep through the night due to loud bang­ing nois­es of unknown origin.

It’s hard to imag­ine a world in which Joe ful­ly sells out, but this could con­nect with a much wider audi­ence than he’s used to, a notion that NEON clear­ly plans on see­ing through. Expect a pre­mière at Cannes, a friend­ly home for his work in the past, before a release lat­er in the year. Aside from that, do away with all expec­ta­tions now.

Take a gan­der at the first still from set below…