Bright light on the 'Horizon'

The first Lao thriller wows another film festival. Even the censors are impressed

A movie made without a budget in a country that has no film industry received an outpouring of praise at the recent Lifescapes Southeast Asian Film Festival.

"At the Horizon" is the first thriller from Laos, a country that has long lagged behind its neighbours in moviemaking.

Directed by Anysay Keola, "At the Horizon" is set in Vientiane, where a spoiled rich college kid clashes with a working-class motorcycle mechanic.

It features elements of contemporary culture - nightclubs, luxury automobiles, smoking, drinking, men wearing earrings, car chases and gun violence - that are not generally depicted in Lao media because of strict censorship.

But Anysay, who got his bachelor's degree from Monash University in Australia and is now a master's student at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, was undaunted. He was determined to make his movie in Laos, and showed his script to the government's cinema department to seek approval.

The first draft was banned. "But we didn't give up," Anysay said after the screening at the Lifescapes event hosted by Chiang Mai's Payap University.

He approached the authorities again and explained that it was a "student film" and would only be shown to his academic adviser at Chula. With that caveat, his request to start production was granted.

The result was above and beyond the average student short film. Here was a full-length feature, with polished and professional production values and a compelling, thrilling narrative.

And once Bounchao Phichit, the director general of the Lao Cinema Department, saw it, "he was impressed", Anysay says, and he urged that it be premiered at last year's second Luang Prabang Film Festival.

The story opens with a young man tied to a chair in a dank room. Another man comes in and, without a word, showers the hostage in cash. The narrative then cuts back and forth from past to present, explaining how the two men from opposite ends of the social spectrum found themselves in their predicament.

The rich kid Sin tools around Vientiane like an American gangsta rapper, driving a Cadillac Escalade SUV while listening to Lao hip-hop and brandishing a handgun.

His opposite Lud is a hard-working motorcycle mechanic whose wife is a vegetable vendor. They have a seven-year-old daughter. And, Lud is mute, a decision the filmmakers made to hammer home the point that "the poor are voiceless".

The characters are "inspired by real people", Anysay says. Yet "they have such illogical thinking - it's incredible that these people exist on Earth".

"At the Horizon" was put together "from the heart" by an all-Lao cast and crew working without pay. Coming from various backgrounds, largely from networking on Facebook, they formed a collective that's been dubbed Lao New Wave Cinema.

The cast are all first-time actors. Sin is played by Khounkham Sidthiyom, a pop singer, while Lud is portrayed by Khamhou Phanludet, a graphic designer. Miss Lao 2012 runner-up Thipphakesone Misaybua is Sin's stern, disapproving girlfriend Mouk, while DJ and television VJ Vatsana Sayoudom is Lud's sweet wife. Seven-year-old Loungnam Kaosaynam, who plays the motorcycle mechanic's bubbly daughter, has already been cast in another movie, an Australian production about Laos.

"We hope to inspire more Lao people to make movies," said assistant director and producer Xaisongkham Induangchanthy.

The film was praised by Lifescapes audience members, who were pleased with the way the story kept them in suspense and guessing until the very end.

"This is the future of Lao cinema," said Gabriel Kuperman, director of the Luang Prabang Film Festival, who's organised workshops led by Anysay and the other Lao New Wave members.

There have been Lao films before "At the Horizon". The 2008 romantic comedy "Sabaidee Luang Prabang" was the first Lao commercial film in more than 30 years. It was a Thai-Lao co-production, with a mostly Thai crew, co-directed by Thailand's Sakchai Deenan and Lao filmmaker Anousone Sirisackda and starring prominent Lao-Australian (but Thai-born) leading man Ananda Everingham.

Sakchai has since directed a couple more "Sabaidee" sequels, with Thai leading men paired up with the movie's starlet, Lao beauty queen Khamly Philavong.

Since then, there have been around 10 Lao films made, but most are propaganda, with strong socialist messages.

Anysay said he wanted to make a thriller that told a real story. He wrote the script without having an audience in mind, he said, adding that he's influenced by the South Korean thrillers of Park Chan-wook, as well as Hollywood directors like David Fincher and David Cronenberg.

After the movie premiered at the Luang Prabang festival, it was screened at the Hua Hin International Film Festival, where - although the audience was extremely small - it attracted the attention of a Thai movie-distribution company.

Laos has just three cinemas, in Vientiane, Pakxe, Savannakhet, that mostly screen Thai and Korean movies. Now they have a Lao movie to show.

"At the Horizon" will open later this month. It'll be censored, with the blurring of handguns, alcohol consumption and smoking, similar to Thai television. Also, the ending will be changed.

Despite the censorship, Anysay said he's glad his movie's going to be shown in Lao cinemas.

"Since we got the permission, it's good enough."