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Thailand has chosen a Cannes-premiered family pilgrimage drama for the 99th Academy Awards – months before most local audiences have had the chance to see it.
9 Temples to Heaven has been selected by the National Federation of Motion Pictures and Contents Associations as Thailand’s official submission for Best International Feature Film. The announcement follows a festival run spanning Cannes, Shanghai and New Zealand, all before the film’s Thai theatrical release .
Written and directed by Sompot Chidgasornpongse, the film follows nine members of one family on a one-day pilgrimage to nine temples. They race to ‘make merit’ in the hope of changing the fate of their grandmother, who has been told she has little time left. The premise is rooted in Thai belief, though Sompot has described its underlying themes – family, faith and hope – as universal.
That unusual route began with a world premiere in Directors’ Fortnight at the 79th Cannes Film Festival. It was the first Thai film selected for the section in 19 years, following Pen-ek Ratanaruang’s Ploy in 2007. As Sompot’s first narrative feature, it was also eligible for the Caméra d'Or.
Awards followed at the 28th Shanghai International Film Festival, where Sompot won Best Director and lead actor Sompop Songkampol won Best Actor in the Golden Goblet Awards’ Asian New Talent competition. In New Zealand, the film later won a Fresh Competition Award at the New Zealand International Film Festival.
That international run helped give 9 Temples to Heaven a near-mythical profile at home: festival wins abroad, little noise in Thailand and a producer credit from Apichatpong Weerasethakul, whose own work has long followed a festival-first, local-release-later path.
Sompot arrived at his narrative-feature debut with almost two decades of experience as Apichatpong’s assistant director, working on Tropical Malady, Syndromes and a Century, Cemetery of Splendour and Memoria. He also directed the documentary Railway Sleepers – an eight-year project shot entirely aboard Thai trains, tracing the daily lives of passengers and rail staff alongside the country's railway history.
The selection came from a crowded field. This year, 51 Thai films met the eligibility rules: they had to be produced outside the United States, run for more than 40 minutes and receive a commercial theatrical release in their home country for at least seven consecutive days between October 1, 2025 and September 30, 2026. A committee of directors, producers, distributors and cinema operators cut the list to eight: 9 Temples to Heaven, Gohan, Morte Cucina, Human Resource, The Undertaker 2, 4 Tigers, Regretfully at Dawn and In the Name of Love.
The committee chose 9 Temples to Heaven, citing its overall distinctiveness, creative quality and weighty subject matter, alongside its strong reception from international crsitics and audiences.creative, profound content that had already impressed critics and audiences on the international circuit.
Thai audiences can finally see it this month. The film opens the Bangkok International Film Festival on September 13 before a nationwide cinema release on September 17 – a timely homecoming as its Oscar campaign begins.