Cannes Critics’ Week Awards Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke’s ‘A Useful Ghost’

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Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke’s “A Useful Ghost” has picked up Critics Week’s Grand Prize.

The film has been picking up fans among journalists since the premiere, intrigued by its absurd yet sweet story of a woman who dies from dust pollution and a husband who’s shocked to find out her spirit has been reincarnated – in a vacuum cleaner.

“A ghost-possessed vacuum cleaner might sound like standard horror fare, but in the hands of Thai director Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke, it transforms into a sly commentary on pollution, power dynamics, and the cost of living crisis in Bangkok,” wrote Variety’s Naman Ramachandran earlier this week, with the director adding:

“Thailand is well known for horror cinema, and we also have a genre that might not travel abroad very much – horror comedy. But with this film, I try not to follow the conventions of both paths. One of my first ideas was wondering how a ghost could exist in contemporary society. Do they need to work? Because the cost of living here is now very expensive.”

The jury, presided over by Rodrigo Sorogoyen and featuring Jihane Bougrine, Josée Deshaies, Yulina Evina Bhara and Daniel Kaluuya, also awarded “Imago” by Déni Oumar Pitsaev.

In the film, Déni inherits a patch of land in the wild valley of Pankissi and sees a chance to finally build the house in the trees that he’s dreamed of. But nothing in the rugged Caucasus is ever simple. Returning to a village just across the Chechen border where he was born, Déni stirs up old feuds.

The Louis Roederer Foundation Rising Star Award went to Théodore Pellerin for “Nino” by Pauline Loquès.

Among other partners’ prizes, the SACD Prize, awarded by France’s Writers’ Guild, went to Guillermo Galoe & Victor Alonso-Berbel, co-scribes of Sleepless City (“Ciudad sin sueño).

Directed by Galoe, the Spanish-French feature delivers a lyrical, stylish but heavily grounded vision of a increasingly fissiparous Roma family in La Cañada Real, said to be the biggest shanty town in Southern Europe, whose way of life is disappearing as its residents are moved to sterile high-rise apartment blocks on the outskirts of Madrid. .

Le Pacte, French distributor for “Left-Handed Girl” by Shih-Ching Tsou, was awarded the Gan Foundation Award for Distribution.

Here’s the full list of awards:

Grand Prize

“A Useful Ghost” by Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke

French Touch Prize of the Jury

“Imago” by Déni Oumar Pitsaev

Louis Roederer Foundation Rising Star Award

Théodore Pellerin for “Nino” by Pauline Loquès

Leitz Cine Discovery Prize for Short Film

“L’mina” by Randa Maroufi

Awards given by partners

Gan Foundation Award for Distribution