Silvia Wong highlights the names to watch out for from the Thai film sector

Ananda Everingham, actor
After debuting in Shutter, the Bangkok-based actor has become one of the most familiar faces in Thai cinema. His films this year include Ploy, Pleasure Factory, Bangkok Time and Queens Of Pattani.

Anocha Suwichakornpong, director
Anocha has secured backing from the Hubert Bals Fund for her debut feature script Sparrow, about the troubled relationship between a paralysed young man and his father.

Chukiat Sakweerakul, director
The Weinstein Company has optioned the remake rights to Chukiat's thriller 13. His next film is a coming-of-age gay drama produced by Ong Bak's Prachya Pinkaew.

Kongkait Komesiri, writer-director
Kongkait's solo directorial effort, the martial-arts drama Muay Thai Chaiya, is the closing film of the Bangkok International Film Festival (see left). He has previously written a slew of local box-office hits and co-directed Art Of The Devil 2.

Santi Taepanich, director
Santi's feature debut Bangkok Time makes its world premiere in the Asean (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) competition section of the Bangkok film festival. He is also the director of Crying Tigers, the first local documentary to receive a wide release in the territory.

Songyos Sugmakanan, director
Songyos collaborated with five university friends on My Girl, which became the top Thai film in 2003. He then went solo with Dorm, which won a prize at Berlin and is now set to make a coming-of-age tale for GTH.

Uruphong Raksasad, director
Uruphong's documentary The Agrarian Utopia, following the cycle of rice farming in the villages of northern Thailand, is the first Thai documentary to receive backing from the Hubert Bals Fund's new digital grant.

Tom Waller, director
Thai-Irish film-maker Tom Waller directed Monk Dawson in the UK 10 years ago. Since returning to Thailand in 2003, Waller has produced three films, Butterfly Man, The Ghost Of Mae Nak and Elephant King, which premiered at Tribeca. He is set to direct his first Thai-language film, 15:15, a coming-of-age drama about two schoolgirls.

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