The Edge of Daybreak

The Edge of Daybreak

Director: Taiki Sakpisit

Country: Thailand, Switzerland

Year: 2021

Running Time: 115 minutes

Producer: Cattleya Paosrijaroen, Soros Sukhum

Starring: Manatsanun Panlertwongskul, Chalad Na Songkhla, Sunida Ratanakorn

Synopsis:

Bangkok 2006, amid brewing political tension, a family, led by politician Parl, shares one final night together at the safe house before a coup d'etat forces him into exile. Later that night, while on the run, Parl crosses paths with a group of illegal immigrants near the Thai-Cambodia border. His wife, Ploy, wakes up from the dream she had the night that she last saw Prasat, her father, at the hospital, as she was held captive. In the mid-1970s, Ploy, aged 9, is in a coma. Prasat has been missing for three years. Pailin, Ploy's mother and Prasat's wife, returns from a sanatorium where she has been recuperating from a mental breakdown. She reunites with the family’s Doctor. The presence of a solar eclipse casts a trance-like spell on everyone. Pailin and Doctor reminisce about the past and consume their long suppressing desire. Later that day, Doctor’s disappearance occurs with the unexpected return of Prasat. Husband and wife face the wounds of their marriage, inner demons, uncompromising darkness and traumatic pasts. As time is suspended by the eclipse, fear and violence loom over the family’s fate and future.

Director’s Biography:

Taiki Sakpisit is a filmmaker and visual artist working in Bangkok. His works explore the underlying tensions and conflicts, and the sense of anticipation in contemporary Thailand, through precise and sensorially overwhelming audio-visual assemblage using a wide range of sounds and images. His films produce heightened and uneasy modes of spectatorship that often relate to the tumultuous socio-political climate in Thailand. Taiki’s moving images and experimental shorts have been presented at numerous exhibitions and film festivals, including International Film Festival Rotterdam, Images Festival, Yebisu International Festival for Art, Hirshhorn Museum, Dallas Contemporary and Kunstverein Gottingen. His previous work “A Ripe Volcano” (2011) has been screened internationally at more than 50 film festivals and museums.