Thai Competition Programme
Au Revoir Siam
(Domenico Singha Pedroli / 2024 / 29 min / France, Switzerland, Thailand)
Following Jaran Ditapichai, a Thai political refugee living in Paris, in his metaphorical journey to his hometown, we un-map a political territory. Through the archives of the National Library of France, a sum of fragile human gestures is exposed, the past is released against the backdrop of an indifferent present made of guitar players, ruins, and an ever-flowing river. Forgotten faces left underwater reappears as we wonder what they have seen, what have they witnessed during the process of border-making of Thailand.
Director’s Statement :
I grew in Switzerland yet Thailand has always been part of my identity, both in language, daily gestures and social relationships (family, friends, etc). However my position has always been that of the outsider, which put me in the position of being a permanent listener. So when I met Jaran Ditapichai in Paris, who has been exiled there since 2016, I tried to understand what does it mean to go through such state of in-betweenness and displacement. As he exposed his personal story to me I felt the urge to get to the root of the issue, which took me the colonial era, when Thailand was indeed being written by Western superpowers, whose archives are scattered throughout Europe.
Domenico Singha Pedroli
Domenico Singha Pedroli (1994) is a Swiss and Thai filmmaker based in Paris and Bangkok. With a multicultural and multidisciplinary approach, his works articulate complex narratives that explore themes of traces, identity, diaspora, in all their mutability. Trained in architecture at USI and in visual arts at Le Fresnoy – Studio national, he has developed a sensitivity to photography, cinema, video art, and VR.
Au Revoir Siam, his latest interdisciplinary project on Thai political refugees and colonial border-making, has been shown at multiple venues including Visions du Réel (CH), the San Diego Asian Film Festival (US), and the Beijing International Short Film Festival (CN). Another Place is a VR experience that brings viewers closer to the protagonist, Renée, a trans woman seeking asylum in France. It was presented at the NewImages Festival in Paris (FR).
Currently, he is a fellow at the Istituto Svizzero in Rome, where he is developing his first feature film. Taking Ovid’s Metamorphoses as a point of departure, the film reflects on how trauma transforms bodies and, from there, how the voice is regained. An early experiment of this research, Tale of Myrrha, was commissioned by the Bangkok Experimental Film Festival in 2025.
Filmography :
Sunsets (2020)
Thin Clouds (2021)
Tierra Utopia (2023)
Au Revoir Siam (2024)
Another Place (2025)
Tale of Myrrha (2025)
Notes on a River Film (2025)
