Movies and documentaries are a great medium for spreading awareness about taboo topics that society actively tries to avoid. An accurate portrayal is essential in such cases so that it does not add to existing stigma about such topics. There have been several films released that talk about medical conditions and commonplace misconceptions about them, and so we give you the Top 10 Thai Movies Which Portrayed Diseases And Disorders.
1. Heart Attack
Heart Attack is a Thai romance film that follows the story of an overly stressed freelance graphic designer who visits a doctor after finding a strange rash on his body. Feelings blossom between the two, but their hectic work hours end up keeping them apart.
2. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives is a film about a man who is afflicted with kidney disease and is going to die. One of the symptoms of kidney disease is intense hallucinations, and we see him imagine several people like his dead wife and also a mysterious creature that he alludes to as his estranged child.
3. Deep
Deep is a medical thriller and follows the story of 4 students that involve themselves and volunteer as test subjects in an experiment about insomnia but end up trapped like lab rats in a sinister scheme that they must now try to escape out of without getting killed.
4. Sia Dai 1
This movie was created to accomplish a widespread goal of creating awareness about drug addiction and a major number of drug addicts being teenagers. Warning parents to look after their children and habits carefully, it follows a bunch of students that get into such practices and the symptoms of which are ignored by peers and family till it is much too late.
5. Sia Dai 2
Sia Dai 2 is another informative film that talks about societal stigma and abandonment regarding people afflicted with the AIDS virus. AIDS is usually associated with sex-related activities but this film presents the other ways of contracting it, that is via blood transfusion as well.
6. Chocolate
Chocolate is a film that tells the story of a girl who has been given some shocking news- her mother is dying of terminal cancer. She has to find money to get her mother medicine somehow. One day she finds a register filled with names of people her mother gave loans to and decides to collect the money back.
7. Cemetery Of Splendour
Cemetery of Splendour is a film about the widespread epidemic that plagued Thailand. In this story, there is a middle-aged woman who is assigned the job of caring for and helping a soldier afflicted with sleeping sickness. In the process of doing so, she starts seeing lucid dreams and hallucinations, which are symptoms of that disease.
8. Memoria
Memoria was internationally coproduced by several talented individuals and was awarded the Jury prize at the Cannes Film Festival. It follows the peculiar tale of a Scottish woman whose life revolves around working as a flower gardener selling plants and her sister in the hospital due to a respiratory illness. One day she experiences a strange sensory syndrome that allows her to hear sounds.
9. One For The Road
One For The Road has a brimming heartfelt story of friendship and kindness and gives a message to live your life to the fullest. A club owner has it all living in New York, but decides to leave it all behind to go on a final road trip with his Thai friend who he discovers has terminal cancer.
10. Tropical Malady
This art film is a psychological thriller that goes through several unrelated instances and tries to connect them. It goes from portraying two soldiers in love who one day rescue a dog but learn it has cancer, and send it to chemotherapy, to telling the story of a man haunted by the spirit of a tiger shaman.
