Thailand’s Pen-ek Ratanaruang Reteams With Christopher Doyle for Culinary Thriller ‘Morte Cucina’ (Exclusive)

Acclaimed Thai auteur Pen-ek Ratanaruang is reteaming with veteran, Asia-based cinematographer Christopher Doyle for a subversive psychological thriller set in the colorful world of Thai cuisine. 

Bangkok-set film Morte Cucina follows a talented young female chef named Sao who has a chance encounter with a man who sexually abused her when she was a teen. “Using her talents in the kitchen, Sao sets her plan of revenge in motion — achieving a rather unexpected result,” the film’s logline reads. 

Morte Cucina is co-written by Pen-ek and Kongdej Jaturanrasamee (Hunger, Faces of Anne). It will be Pen-ek’s first feature since his noir crime thriller Samui Song, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2017. The project reunites the Thai auteur and Doyle for the first time since their 2003 project together, Last Life in the Universe, which was Thailand’s official submission to the Oscars that year, and also won its Japanese star, Tadanobu Asano, the best actor award in Venice. 

The film will be produced by Soros Sukhum of 185 Films (which recently produced Netflix’s Thai thriller Hunger) and Conor Zorn from Little River Entertainment, with Manuel Chiche from Joker Films and Alexandra Hoesdorff of Deal Productions co-producing. Goodfellas (formerly Wild Bunch) is handling international sales, aside from North America, which CAA is representing. 

The film recently received funding from Film Fund Luxembourg and is scheduled to shoot in Thailand in the fourth quarter of this year, with a festival launch and international release targeted for 2024. See the first poster for the project below.