In April the Following Year, There Was a Fire

Sin maysar fon tok ma proi proi

A boy leaves Bangkok for a wedding party in his north-eastern hometown, where his experiences blur into the director’s own family memories of a divorce, a fire and a jellyfish sting.

Even if a screening is sold out, tickets are often available 30 minutes before the start at the box office at each venue.

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Director-Screenwriter Wichanon Somumjarn
Producer Anocha Suwichakornpong, Maenum Chagasik
With Uten Sririwi, Jinnapat Ladarat, Saeree Pimpa
Thailand 2012
76 mins
Sales Pascale Ramonda

Nuhm leaves Bangkok for a wedding party in his home town. The trip occasions several reunions but also triggers memories of his family history and of conflicts with his dad. And then the film weaves in episodes from the director’s own family memories: a fire, a divorce, a jellyfish sting... The plotless flow of conversation and incident, fiction and fact, reverie and reality, adds up to a portrait of modern Thailand, emphasising the chasm between urban and rural lives. Trained as an architect, Wichanon brings a profoundly poetic eye to an almost Proustian vision.

Tony Rayns

Director statement

My house was burnt down soon after I was born. As a result, we all had to move to the out-of-town accommodation provided to us by the school where my parents were teachers. ‘We’ means my father, my mother, my older brother, and myself. Not long after the move, my family started having problems and eventually my parents were divorced, sending our lives into different paths. When my mother died, we moved into a new house after having spent a good amount of time moving from one relative’s house to the next. Even though we got to live together again, our relationships were different by this time. Perhaps because none of us really understood what it meant to have a ‘home’. All this is well in the past. It is history now. We have all moved on and learnt how to adapt to the world the best we could. What remains of those days are only a few faded photographs and the memories etched onto our mind like scars. In April the Following Year, There Was a Fire is my first feature made up of both recollections and imagination. The threads of the story, taking place in the present as well as the past, are connected together in the protagonist’s mind. The narrative, hence, unfolds like a dream, where past and present collide. This is a story about my land.
Wichanon Somumjarn

Director biography

Born in Khon Kaen in 1982, he was in the final year of studying engineering when he made a short film entitled Phee Hong Nam (W.C.) This won an honourable mention at the 2005 Thai Artist Awards in the film category, and he then decided to leave his formal studies to pursue his dreams in the field of cinema, making further shorts while participating in talent workshops in Pusan, Berlin and Tokyo. His third short, Four Boys, White Whiskey and Grilled Mouse, won the Best Fiction award at the Tampere Film Festival in Finland in 2010. In April the Following Year, There Was a Fire is Wichanon’s first feature.

Filmography

2005 Phee Hong Nam (W.C.) [s]
2007 A Brighter Day [s]
2009 Tiang naa noi koi rak (Four Boys, White Whiskey and Grilled Mouse) [s]
2012 Sin maysar fon tok ma proi proi (In April the Following Year, There was a Fire)