Gritty Thai Drama ‘Doi Boi’ Marks Feature Debut for Documentary Veteran Nontawat Numbenchapol: ‘Everyone Starts With a Dream’ (EXCLUSIVE)

variety.com:

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief After making four documentary features about border conflicts, ethnicity, prostitution and human rights, Thai director Nontawat Numbenchapol picks up many of the same themes in his first fiction feature “Doi Boi.” The film, which premieres this week in the Jiseok competition section of the Busan International Film Festival, is the story of three young men living on the margins of society in Thailand and their common quest for justice.

The characters are an illegal immigrant from Myanmar working, despite his own heterosexuality, as a gay prostitute in Chiang Main, a customer and an on-the-run political activist he is trying to help.

The narrative takes in a large number of the social and political problems that have beset seemingly idyllic Thailand in recent years – undocumented workers, illegal immigrants fleeing the civil war in Myanmar, an oppressive political power structure, enforced ‘disappearance’ of those who the government’s political opponents and critics, police brutality – and traffic jams. “I was surprised to find so many immigrant men [from Myanmar’s Shan region] as sex workers in Chiang Mai.

It is not because they want this kind of work, but because they are undocumented and forced into low-paid jobs. I thought about making this as a documentary, but the subject is too dangerous to do that way,” Numbenchapol told Variety. “Another reason that I took this route was that I felt I’d already learned a lot about making documentaries and risked becoming stale.