In April The Following Year, There Was A Fire

Wichanon Somumjarn's In April The Following Year, There Was A Fire (Thailand, 2012) - Nuhm is a construction foreman working in Bangkok. The political instability in Thailand has making its presence felt in all business sectors. Nuhm suddenly finds himself out of jobs. He decides to leave Bangkok to go back to his hometown in the northeast of Thailand to attend his high school friend’s wedding during the Thai New Year in April -- which also happens to be the hottest month of the year. Nuhm reunites with his old friends at the wedding in Khon Kaen. He also runs into Joy, a senior from his high school whom he used to have a crush on, and is now an office woman. They exchange their phone numbers. Suddenly, the film turns into another direction. Some interview footage of the director’s father and brother is included, and we learn that the film is a semi-autobiography of the director’s life. The character of Nuhm is, nonetheless, as much a construct as it is real. From this point on, the film becomes the voyage of a young man into the labyrinths of the real and the imagined, the documentary and the fiction, the past and the present – and notonly of his self but also of the Thai society writ large.