Locarno Taps Thai Director Apichatpong Weerasethakul to Head Main Jury

ROME – The Locarno Film Festival announced Thursday that iconoclastic Thai-born director, screenwriter and producer Apichatpong Weerasethakul would head the international jury at this year’s edition of the lakeside Swiss festival.

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Weerasethakul’s short career has been filled with prestigious honors, including winning the 2010 Palme d’Or in Cannes for Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives; 2004 Cannes jury prize winner Tropical Malady; Syndromes and a Century, the first Thai film to screen in competition at the Venice Film festival in 2003; and Blissfully Yours, which won the Un Certain Regard sidebar in Cannes in 2002.

“In just a few magnificent films … Apichatpong Weerasethakul has been a major revelation in world cinema,” Locarno artistic director Olivier Pere, said in a statement announcing Weerasethakul’s selection. “The Thai filmmaker, whose poetic and dreamlike films blend his country’s national legends, a sensual feel for the physical and natural world as well as new narrative and visual styles borrowed from contemporary art, has invented a mutant form of cinema that completelyoverturns our viewing habits and takes us into unexplored areas that verge on the sublime.”

The 41-year-old Weerasethakul will head the jury that will hand out the festival’s top Golden Leopard prize at the 65th edition of storied festival, which will run this year Aug. 1-11.