Sang Sattawat

The first collaboration between Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Simon Field, a long-term friend of the Viennale who tragically passed away in July, SANG SATTAWAT inaugurated one of cinema’s great director-producer relationships. It was Field’s idea to commission a film from Apichatpong for New Crowned Hope, an arts festival commemorating the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth. The unorthodox, wondrous result is a testament to his instinct. Apichatpong conceived SANG SATTAWAT as an ode to love and connection, refracted through memories of his parents. The first half is set in a rural hospital like the one where they worked during his childhood. Romance sparks among the staff, Buddhist monks try to score drugs without a prescription, and a dentist moonlights as a country singer, crooning about oral hygiene. Suddenly, everything relocates to a modern city hospital. The palm trees outside the windows are replaced with skyscrapers and the quaintly spartan facilities with sterile hallways and gleaming machines. As characters reappear and events recur, the play of repetition and variation suggests dichotomies—pastoral and urban, past and present, idyllic and dystopian—only to then blur their boundaries and embrace the pleasures found between them. (Giovanni Marchini Camia)

This film is presented in memory of writer, festival programmer, curator and producer Simon Field, who passed away on July 16, 2026.

Apichatpong Weerasethakul (selection): MYSTERIOUS OBJECT AT NOON (2000), BLISSFULLY YOURS (2002), THE ADVENTURE OF IRON PUSSY (2003, CO-DIRECTOR), TROPICAL MALADY (2004), SYNDROMES AND A CENTURY (2006), UNCLE BOONMEE WHO CAN RECALL HIS PAST LIVES (2010), MEKONG HOTEL (2012), CEMETERY OF SPLENDOUR (2015), MEMORIA (2021)