Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives

Apichatpong won the Palme d’Or at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival for this gently comic and wholly transporting tale of death and rebirth, set in Thailand’s rural northeast. Uncle Boonmee, a farmer suffering from kidney failure, is tended by loved ones and visited by the ghosts of his wife and son. As for his remembered past lives, they might—or might not—include a water buffalo, a disfigured princess, a talking catfish, and the insects whose chirps engulf the nighttime jungle scenes in this sensory immersion. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives is an otherworldly fable that lingers on earthly sensations, a film about a dying man that’s filled with mysterious signs of life. Apichatpong’s vision is above all a generous one: in the threat of extinction he sees the possibility of regeneration. An NYFF48 Main Slate selection.