Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul was BOTD in 1970. Born in Bangkok to a middle-class ethnic Chinese family, he grew up in Khon Kaen in rural northeastern Thailand, where his parents practised as doctors. After training as an architect at at Khon Kaen University, he studied filmmaking at the Art Institute of Chicago. Returning to Thailand in 1999, he formed his production company, Kick the Machine, to make films outside of Thailand’s restrictive film industry, releasing his feature debut Dokfa nai meuman (Mysterious Object at Noon) in 2000. His 2002 filmS̄ud s̄aǹeh̄ā (Blissfully Yours), a drama about illegal immigration that morphs into a dream-like picnic, was censored in Thailand for sexual content but won a prize at the Cannes Festival. In an amusing change of pace, he co-directed Huajai tor ra nong (The Adventure of Iron Pussy), the third film in a comic trilogy about a cross-dressing secret agent. He won the Jury Prize at the 2004 Cannes Festival for Satpralat (Strange Animal, released internationally as Tropical Malady), a surrealist gay love story set in a menacing jungle landscape. His 2006 film S̄æng ṣ̄atawǎat (Syndromes and a Century), a love story about two young doctors, inspired by his parents’ relationship, became the first Thai film screened in competition at the Venice Festival. Thai censors refused to allow the film to be screened unless 15 minutes’ worth of “inappropriate” scenes were cut; in response, Weerasethakul replaced the censored scenes with scratched black film frames and silence. He is best known for his film Lung Bunmi Raluek Chat (Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives), a magic realist drama about a dying man visited by the ghosts of his family. Screened at the 2010 Cannes Festival where it was the surprise winner of the Palme d’Or, it became his most well-known and widely-seen film. His most recent feature film Memoria, his first film made in English and set outside Thailand, starred Tilda Swinton as a grieving woman adrift in Colombia. Screened at the 2021 Cannes Festival, it won Weerasethakul his second Jury Prize. Weerasethakul has also created a number of gallery installations, notably 2007’s Teem, a series of portraits of his then-boyfriend Teem waking from sleep. Identifying as queer (“For me, the word ‘queer’ means anything’s possible“), he lives in Chiang Mai, and teaches filmmaking at Tama Art University in Tokyo, Japan. His relationship status is unknown.