Apichatpong revealed he plans to head to Sri Lanka to shoot his next film and he may be partnering with a streamer for the film. With plans to do some location-scouting starting this month, he hopes this new project will be “more free” than his last one. “This time, I want it to be more flexible. It’ll be a smaller budget, and probably with [my longtime actors] Jenjira [Pongpas] and Sakda [Kaewbuadee],” he said, hoping to not have a strict list of things to shoot each day. “It’s the same old gang.”
As for his inspirations, he’s looking toward sci-fi author and 2001: A Space Odyssey co-writer Arthur C. Clarke. “He lived and died in Sri Lanka, and one of his books, The Fountains of Paradise, is set in a fictional land based on a Sri Lankan landscape,” the director said. The novel, released in 1979, was set in the 22nd century and followed a visionary scientist who “conceives the most grandiose engineering project of all time, and one which will revolutionize the future of humankind in space: a Space Elevator, 36,000 kilometers high, anchored to an equatorial island in the Indian Ocean.” While it’s unclear if he would be drawing direct inspiration from the novel, with Memoria‘s (spoiler?) sci-fi twist, it would be fascinating to see the director head further down this path.
Apichatpong also said “another source of inspiration was an article written by a Thai woman who went there on a religious pilgrimage. She speaks about climbing a holy mountain, the same one that inspired Clarke’s story, so I’m going to go check it out.”
Speaking of its length, it may be his longest project yet. “I wrote a treatment for a three- or four-hour movie, just from my imagination, from what I dream about,” he said. “When you talk about 90 minutes, it’s a comfortable length. The human attention span is 90 minutes, and the dream cycle is also 90 minutes. To make it longer is like a challenge: how to create a journey where you don’t feel trapped by this human, biological requirement.”
Lastly, the Uncle Boonmee director revealed what we’ve all been waiting for: his thoughts on James Cameron’s Avatar: The Way of Water. “It’s so simple, right? It’s such a classic storyline, there’s no innovation there, but the technology is amazing,” he said. “In other movies that are completely computer-generated, you can feel there’s something missing, whereas in this one you are able to identify. The characters have those very big eyes, they’re like babies. It’s a mass market product, and I admire that aspect which only Hollywood can do.”

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