ACF - Asian Cinema Fund

2026 Co-Production Support Fund

LIST Rhizome

Director’s Profile

Jakrawal Nilthamrong is a Thai filmmaker, visual artist, and screenwriter known for experimental narrative structures, philosophical themes, and a cinematic language that blends realism, surrealism, memory, and non-linear storytelling. Born in Lopburi, Thailand in 1977, he studied Fine Arts at Silpakorn University and later earned an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He made his feature directorial debut with Unreal Forest (2010), screened at the International Film Festival Rotterdam 2010. His sophomore feature Vanishing Point (2015) was critically acclaimed and won the prestigious Hivos Tiger Award at International Film Festival Rotterdam 2015. His last feature Anatomy of Time (2021), a non-linear, meditative feature exploring complex personal memory, religion, and Thai politics, which premiered in the Orizzonti section at the Venice Film Festival 2021. He is a co-founder of Mit Out Sound Films, an independent Bangkok-based production company established with filmmaker Phuttiphong Aroonpheng and producer Chatchai Chaiyon.

Synopsis

In 1994, twenty-seven-year-old Na (Nina) returns to Laos from the US as a refugee to join a southern Unexploded Ordnance (UXO) clearance team. Living with Khamsoi, a technician, and Bua, the team's stoic leader, Na faces her buried trauma when they discover a massive bomb strangled by tree roots. This image triggers agonizing childhood memories of fleeing to the Thai border with her family. Facing her fears, Na trains under Bua, and their friction soon evolves into an intense, protective intimacy. This fragile sanctuary shatters when a sudden explosion kills Khamsoi, plunging Bua into a catatonic depression that severs her bond with Na. Stranded in grief, Na learns from Big-D, a local doctor, that her missing father leads an isolated Hmong rebel faction. She flees into the jungle with him, embarking on a feverish journey where the boundary between her psyche and the haunted land dissolves. Captured at a hidden mountain camp, Na discovers her father has died of malaria, and uncovers documents exposing his past as a brutal war criminal. Crushed by inherited guilt and grief, Na walks deep into the primeval forest, entangling her fate with the earth. Twenty years later, an older Bua boards the new Laos–China high-speed train and finds Na sitting beside her. Silently, Na rests her head on Bua's lap in a bittersweet surrender to an unbreakable love.

Director’s Note / Intention

Rhizome grows from the belief that war does not end with a ceasefire ― it lives beneath the surface, in soil, memory, and body. Trauma behaves like a rhizome: a hidden root system sending up unexpected shoots across generations. Laos, the most bombed country in history, is a living archive where unresolved violence reorganizes space and perception. Through Nina, I explore memory not as a fixed narrative, but as an unstable, inherited echo. Through Bua, I honor the quiet, ritualistic labor required to make a future possible. This film does not treat war as a spectacle, nor does it treat exposure as victimhood. Instead, it asks how we might live within wounded ground without being defined solely by its scars. Returning to the lingering remnants of a war half a century old is not an act of nostalgia ― it is an urgent question posed to the present.

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