Story by Anna Lawattanatrakul
Cover illustration by Kittiya On-in

Time travel, warp-speed technology, kaiju monsters, and the relics of the US military presence in Thailand all feature in Taklee Genesis, a new film by director Chukiat Sakveerakul.

The film follows single mother Stella (Paula Taylor) and her daughter Valen (Nutthacha Padovan). Summoned back to her hometown by a childhood friend to care for her sick mother, an old radio gives Stella a message from her father, an American officer who went missing 30 years ago after travelling into a forbidden forest. To bring him back, she was instructed to visit an old US radio station in Udon Thani and use the titular machine, a warp-speed teleporter left behind by the US military after the Vietnam War, to travel through time and space.

Paula Taylor as Stella (Picture from Taklee Genesis final trailer)

Chukiat made his cinema debut 20 years ago with the horror film Pisaj, but is mostly known for Love of Siam, a romantic drama about the relationship between two young men. Science fiction is rare in Thai cinema, and Taklee Genesis has been noted for being nothing like his previous films. It was met with criticism since the release of the first teaser, and has received mixed reviews since it arrived in the cinema.

Known as a maker of romantic dramas, Chukiat said he has always been interested in science fiction. He wanted to do something he has never done before, he said, and Taklee Genesis is the kind of film he was not sure if he would ever get the chance to make.

Prachatai English spoke with Chukiat about Taklee Genesis, making a sci-fi film from Thai history, and his hopes of the future of Thai cinema.

Confronting the past

(Picture from Taklee Genesis final trailer)

Taklee Genesis spans thousands of years, from the pre-historic Ban Chiang settlement to the 1970’s at a university in the middle of a massacre and Udon Thani 200 years in the future, where a group of young rebels hide in an old building from the forces of the central government.

Chukiat said he wanted to tell the story of what comes after the Vietnam War, when the US was using Thailand as the location of several military bases, and the lingering relics of the Cold War. The film is particularly haunted by the 6 October 1976 Thammasat University Massacre, a crackdown by police and lynchings by right-wing paramilitaries and bystanders of leftist student protesters which resulted in the deaths of at least 40 people.

Chukiat said that people often asked him if he was afraid of including this often unmentioned piece of Thai history in his film, but he asked what he has to fear when it was a historical event that happened. People also should not forget the price that was paid for the freedom they now have, he said.

“The 6 October event is a major wound,” Chukiat said. “I don’t mean to trample over it or bring it back up, but whenever we forget, the cycle will always return. I feel that if people are aware of and can see where the event started, it will help keep it from happening again in the future. It will help lead to negotiation, help restrain thinking, and find a new way out for conflicts that could happen in the future. I think there is no deeper wound than that event.”

“Our future has always been killed”

When asked if presenting a cycle of repression would make the film seem hopeless, Chukiat said that there is still hope. The film is an exaggerated picture of a cycle that has been happening in Thai history, he said, showing that if we don’t work for change, this cycle will come back for the future generation.

“Our future has always been killed and repressed,” he said.

Chukiat said he was working on the script when the student protests that began in 2020 were still ongoing and young activists were harassed and imprisoned, and that he would like the film to remind people of them.

“In every era, there are going to be people who rise up to fight for a better world. Even if we lose today, we still have to encourage people with the same ideals who still think that someday the world will get better, so don’t become the kind of adults you don’t like,” he said.

Asked if he is worried about becoming the kind of adult he doesn’t like, Chukiat said he is trying not to become one. He acknowledged that he disagrees with some methods used by the younger generation, noting that he believes negotiation is the best way forward, but he still thinks that he would have done the same when he was younger. Taklee Genesis would be an angrier film if he had made it as a young filmmaker, he said, or it could be so radical that nobody would fund it.

Where is the future of Thai cinema?

(Picture from Taklee Genesis final trailer)

Taklee Genesis has both been praised and criticized for being ambitious, and taunted for underperforming in the box office. Nevertheless, Chukiat said he does not feel the pressure, since criticism is not something he can control. Meanwhile, he said, the screening rights for Taklee Genesis have been sold in at least 70 countries, as well as to streaming platforms.

For Chukiat, the future of Thai cinema is elsewhere. He noted that Thai audiences might not like sci-fi, but he wanted to make a film that could put Thai films in the global spotlight. It is good to be ambitious, he said, noting that criticizing people for their ambition could mean that the next generation of filmmakers will be too afraid to think outside the box.

“If I’m not ambitious and trying to find a way out and looking to other markets and still making our films, let me ask you how we’re going to live? If you don’t let people be ambitious about thinking something new or doing something new, are you telling them to kill themselves?” he asked.

Thai drama series are dying, and films are going nowhere, he said. Television broadcasters no longer want to start filming new series as the fall in the number of advertisers means that they are forced to turn to other methods, like buying advertisements on social media platforms. However, this means that very little money is going back to the people who work at these TV channels and fewer jobs are available. Chukiat noted that series makers could turn to streaming platforms, but these platforms do not fund as many productions as broadcasters and are doing so on a much smaller scale.

Meanwhile, he said, the number of Thai filmmakers is dwindling. Not a lot of people now want to make films for the big screen, and making things for streaming means that most of the money goes to the platform. Although he said that there are many good Thai films this year that are making money in the box office, theatres in Thailand are run by a very few chains which have the power to arrange programmes as they see fit, meaning that some films need to rely on word of mouth to stay in theatres.

And while Chukiat said that theatre chains have the right to do whatever they need to run their business, he said that some measures need to be put in place to make it fair. These measures could be tax-related or a Thai film quota, he said, but there needs to be a discussion among stakeholders about what these measures will be. It would also be better, he said, if there were more theatres so audiences would have more options.

For Chukiat, Taklee Genesis is a personal success in that he gets to do something outside of the box. At the very least, he is happy he gets to make something people may not have imagined a Thai filmmaker could make.

“For me, I’m happy that I get to bring my film to this point and it opens many doors for people who have imagination, who have vision, and who want to do something like this too. I believe that soon there will be someone else to make a film in this genre, and they will do it better than me. They will take Thai cinema further than I can. I’m happy that I get to make this film. I’m proud of it, and I’m proud of everyone who helped make it.”