Thailand has selected Sompot Chidgasornpongse’s 9 Temples to Heaven as its submission for the best international feature category at the 99th Academy Awards.
The National Federation of Motion Pictures and Contents Associations, Thailand’s Oscar selection body, chose the film from 51 eligible titles after narrowing the field to eight. According to reports in the Thai press, the committee said it held several rounds of deliberations before settling on 9 Temples to Heaven, citing its distinctiveness, overall quality, profound subject matter and the reception it received from international critics after its Cannes debut.
The film world premiered in Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight section in May, becoming the first Thai feature selected for the sidebar in nearly two decades.
A gently comic family road movie, 9 Temples to Heaven follows businessman Sakol as he’s warned by a fortune teller that his ailing mother may soon die. Hoping to ward off the prophecy, he packs his mom and their extended family into a van for a single-day pilgrimage to nine Buddhist temples, where clashing beliefs and simmering tensions among the family steadily emerge as the elderly matriarch grows increasingly exhausted.
