Apichatpong Weerasethakul's directorial debut, which translates roughly from the thai original as “Blue Flower in the Devil's Hand,” can be imagined as a kind of Chinese whispers: The film crew travels through Thailand, tells a story, has it partially reenacted by local people, and the locals add their own details, their own myths, creating a whole web of new stories. The result is a kind of new cryptic creation story; a surrealist party game popular in the 1920s called “Cadavre Exquis” served as a model for the film crew. Shot on 16mm, this experimental documentary film shows us, in just under 90 minutes, a Thailand beyond the tourist hotspots; a country in constant motion and development. Apichatpong Weerasethakul's lack of interest in conventional cinematic narratives is already evident in his debut. In his later work, including the Cannes winner Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, retold stories and myths also play a role, but there, fiction actually becomes reality.