A young medium and a hospital volunteer investigate a case of mass sleeping sickness that may have supernatural roots, in the gorgeous, mysterious, and gently hypnotic new film from Thai writer-director Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives).

When a group of soldiers fall ill after working at an excavation site in North-East Thailand, they slip into what threatens to be perpetual slumber. Sent to a temporary hospital where their inexplicable affliction is studied, their dormant bodies are tended to by Jen, a kind-hearted middle-aged woman, and Keng, a psychic who helps the soldiers’ family members to contact their loved ones. When Keng and Jen become especially attached to one particular slumbering recruit – the handsome Itt – his notebook and its cryptic statements and diagrams reveal clues regarding the origins of the sleeping sickness and its relationship to the ancient past.


Digging deep into the supernatural roots of Thailand’s rich mystical tradition and blurring the lines between the living, the dead and those hovering somewhere in between, Weerasethakul creates a meditative and mythic rumination on the state of his nation. A sublime fusion of history, memory, mysticism and socio-political allegory - all enacted with his now trademark serenity and patience - this is an eerily becalmed work from one of cinema’s most intuitive translators of the language of dreams.

• The screening of Cemetery of Splendour on Tue 21 June is part of our Cinébites deal: get 30% off any main dish in the Café/Bar with a valid cinema ticket.

---