MEKONG HOTEL

In a hotel overlooking the Mekong River, Apichatpong Weerasethakul and his team are rehearsing for a film about a meeting on a hotel terrace on the banks of the Mekong between Phon, and young girl, and Tong, a young man. The young girl discovers the existence of cannibalistic ghosts known as “pobs”.

The synopsis of Mekong Hotel mentions your shuffling of different “realms”. Seen in terms of levels of “reality” this seems very characteristic of many of your films but here you also speak of “fact and fiction” and the film shifts constantly between the two.

Apichatpong Weerasethakul : I think I am pretending to mean reality when I say “fact”. But in movies, reality doesn’t exist. One is just trying to capture moments and reconstruct them to stimulate your view, your understanding. This film is conscious of these layers and levels of distortion. So I think that it can be called a “documentary” in a classical sense. It is a contemplation on making a fiction.

(Mekong Hotel Press kit, 2012)