The original Thai title, Dofka in the Devil’s Hand, was replaced by a cadavre exquis, the surrealist technique that consists in several people producing a text without any of the participants knowing what was written before. The film was built in this way: the result of a journey where random encounters string together the course of a fantastic tale whose heroes are a teacher and a handicapped child. An opening title card dissipated any naturalist misconception: “Once upon a time”. That is the horizon of that which lies at the heart of an archaic and disconcerting promise.
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Restored in 2013 by the Austrian Film Museum and Cineteca di Bologna/L’Immagine Ritrovata, in association with The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project, LISTO (Vienna), Technicolor (in Bangkok) and Apichatpong Weerasethakul, and funded by the Doha Film Institute
