Mae La has been home to more than 40,000 refugees for more than 30 years. Lives supposedly “inbetween” have become permanent while the camp has acquired features of a city: dynamic, vibrant, with more facilities and more mobility for refugees than one would expect.

This project is a semi-longitudinal work over a four-year timespan, produced in an artistic and ethnographic context. It started with personal curiosity and later developed into a tribute to the fascinating individuals of Mae La who shared their stories with the makers.

The short film presents a personal reflection on the lives of refugees in long-term camps, for whom the camp has become their home and raises questions about issues of citizenship, statelessness, nationality and permanent residency.

Produced by designer and filmmaker Belle Phromchanya and anthropologist Jiraporn Laocharoenwong, the documentary has recently been screened at the Pakhuis de Zwijger cultural centre in Amsterdam. After the screening in Thailand, there will be an informal Q&A discussion with both makers and Matcha Phornin, a human and gender rights activist who works on issues of statelessness with refugees and other marginalised communities.

This event is part of the series “Displaced and Uprooted in Southeast Asia” in collaboration with TIFA Foundation. The series aims to give visibility to the fate of displaced persons, asylum seekers and refugees in the region and stimulate public discussion on inclusive policy and intervention responses to forced movements of people.

The event is free, but donations are welcome to enable SEA Junction to continue its activities and keep events accessible to the public.

For more information and reservations, please call (097) 002 4140 or email southeastasiajunction@gmail.com.

The Italian Film Festival returns to town next week for its fifth edition and this year will be screening a total of 10 recent movies, by both established director and rookies.

Organised by Dante Alighieri Cultural Association and sponsored by Generali Thailand, the event is part of the annual “Italian Festival Thailand” and is set to run from May 16 to 26.

The festival opens at Scala Theatre next Thursday at 9pm with “Forever You” (“Un’Avventura”), a 2019 musical film by Marco Danieli. Set in the 1970s, it centres on Matteo. He has been secretly in love with Francesca since they were kids, but she left the small town in which they grew up to travel the world. Now she’s back and Matteo decides to finally make her fall in love with him, even if she’s no longer the simple girl he remembered. The film is in Italian with English and Thai subtitles. The second screening will be at Cinema Oasis on May 25 at 9.30pm.

Other films, all screening at Cinema Oasis on Sukhumvit Soi 43 (BTS Phrompong) and in Italian with English subtitles, are as follows:

Romolus & Remus – The First King (2019)

This tale with no narrative precedents brings the viewer to an unknown world where the forces of nature and primitive humanity intertwine with the beliefs and superstitions that ruled life at that time. In the Eighth century BC, the area spanning the banks of the Tiber and the hills of Lazio is occupied only by rudimentary villages. This is a wild world open to exploration and conquest and one day will witness the founding of Rome. Here everybody fights to survive, and the universe of beliefs, mysticism and religion is the only means for men to understand the world.

Friday May 17, 9pm

Saturday May 25, 7pm

Capri – Revolution

It is 1914, and Italy is about to go to war. A commune of young North Europeans has found on Capri the ideal place to live their lives and practise their art. But the island has its own powerful identity, in the person of a young woman, a goatherd named Lucia (Marianna Fontana). The film describes the encounter between Lucia, the commune, headed by Seybu (Reinout Scholten van Aschat), and the young village doctor (Antonio Folletto).

Sunday May 19, 9pm

Friday May 24, 9pm

Happy As Lazzaro

Lazzaro is such a purehearted young man that many would consider him to be an idiot. He might be a peasant but he’s worthy enough for the friendship of spoiled aristocrat Tancredi. They find joy in a forgotten pastoral world of deception and lies. The truth will separate them, but Lazzaro’s loyalty will withstand the test of time when he is catapulted alone into a bleak metropolis.

Saturday May 18, 9pm

Sunday May 26, 9pm

The Strange Sound of Happiness

After years of drifting, Diego returns to Sicily. His dream of becoming a musician has not worked out. He has no job and no plans for the future but the sound of an ancient musical instrument, the mouth harp, points the way. From the torrid coasts of Sicily, Diego journeys to the frozen flatlands of Yakutia in Siberia where he becomes part of a prophecy from a century ago.

Saturday May 18, 7pm

Wednesday May 22, 9pm

Sunday May 26, 5pm

Travelling with Adele

Adele, a 25-year-old girl with a mental disorder, has never met her father and has always lived under the protective wing of her mother Margherita.

Everything changes when her very existence is overturned by the latter’s sudden and unexpected death. Abandoned by all her relatives, Adele will meet Aldo, 65, an actor who was summoned to Apulia in order to pay his last respects to the deceased. Aldo discovers that he is the girl’s biological father and he must tell her the truth. And so begins a journey through an inhospitable Apulia in which two perfect strangers transform an improbable relationship into something unique and unforgettable, one that by degrees resembles what they never thought they could be together: a father and daughter.

Friday May 17, 7pm

Thursday May 23, 5pm

Sunday May 26, 7pm at Cinema Oasis

We’ll Be Young And Beautiful

(Comedy, student film)

Isabella still sings “Tic Tac”, the song that made her famous in the early nineties, when she was only seventeen. Her place is the Big Star, which has also become her second home. Her young son Bruno is her guitarist. The two are inseparable, they perform every night together and they share a ramshackle but happy life of unpaid bills and midnight strolls around the city. Bruno, however, dreams of a different musical career.

Sunday May 19, 7pm

Thursday May 23, 9pm

Saturday May 25, 5pm

Wherever You Are

When Alessandro wears his shiny lucky shirt, he doesn’t feel his age. But after a life wasted on a slot machine, already drunk early in the morning, hoping for the luck of a scratch card, he would never have imagined that love could find him. In a hospital. It’s here, that he meets Francesca. Big green eyes, melancholy and bright, spontaneous as a child and with two ship tickets in her pocket. Alessandro and Francesca are finally out of the hospital, on their way to a last chance.

Wednesday May 22, 5pm

Friday May 24, 7pm

Sunday, May 26, 3pm

The Start-Up

Almost every adolescent dreams of inventing an app. Teenager Matteo creates a social platform where people negotiate job offers. At the beginning, no one believes in his project, but Matteo never loses his faith, and, in the end, he succeeds. At the age of 19, he suddenly receives national praise and becomes rich and popular. His ‘Start Up,’ which includes dozens of thousands of subscribers, becomes appealing to the most important companies. Success will soon take its toll.

Saturday May 18, 5pm

Wednesday May 22, 7pm

Friday May 24, 5pm

There is a Light

A touching road movie about parenthood, responsibility and finding your limits. Mia, a pregnant, vagrant singer, meets Paolo, a sensible and heartbroken gay man, in a club and the pair hit it off immediately. Borrowing a company van, they embark on an epic roadtrip from the north to the south of Italy. Can the pair find happiness on the run?

Sunday May 19, 5pm

Thursday May 23, 7pm

Saturday, May 25 3pm

For more than two decades Dr Larry Nassar was the osteopathic physician for the US women’s Olympic gymnastics team, as well as a physician at Michigan State University (MSU). During that time, he sexually abused hundreds of female athletes.

Offering insights that go beyond the sensational headlines, the documentary reveals a dangerous system that prioritised winning over everything else, including protecting young female athletes.

Through interviews with dozens of survivors, as well as coaches, lawyers, journalists and Judge Rosemarie Aquilina, the film exposes an environment in which young women spent their youth competing for victory on a world stage, juxtaposed against a culture where abuse was hidden, and lives were forever damaged.

For more than 20 years, Dr Larry Nassar worked with athletes, especially gymnasts, as a respected trainer and team physician. He taught Sunday school, volunteered in the community and was seemingly well liked. While Nassar tended to aches and pains, becoming a friend and confidant to many girls along the way, some of the methods he presented as treatment were sexual abuse.

For years, accusations and evidence grew against the doctor, as several young women came forward to their coaches, universities and parents. At Michigan State, mounting evidence suggested that reports of Nassar’s improper treatments, which sometimes occurred when parents were present, were dismissed by officials who chose to defend the popular doctor.

In 2016, after Rachael Denhollander went public with her story in the Indianapolis Star, the tide finally began to turn against Nassar, as more and more women filed lawsuits against him and the institutions that had shielded him for so long.

Nassar was subsequently fired from MSU. In 2017, he pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography after 37,000 images were found on his computer. He eventually also pleaded guilty to abuse charges in Michigan, with the understanding that another 125 cases would not be tried. After one of the most highprofile trials in recent history, Nassar was found guilty and is currently in federal prison.

In January 2018, Ingham County sentencing, 88 survivors had been scheduled to make statements. By the end of that week, 156 women, all with a shared history of abuse, had bravely come forward. Chelsea Zerfas spoke of the impact of the trauma and her journey to heal, stating, “I get scared that I will be taken advantage of once again by another doctor, just like you did. I’ve tried my best to gain back the strength I once had. I am a survivor. Here I am today facing my abuser. I’m finally being heard. I’m no longer hiding my story.”

Trinea Gonczar, another survivor and a longtime family friend of Nassar, said to her abuser, “You hurt me, as I’ve had to realise I was abused for many years of my life…I will do everything for the rest of my life to make sure that the ‘you’s’ of this world don’t get to hurt another one of us.”

After a week of powerful testimonies, Judge Rosemarie Aquilina meted out a 175year sentence, effectively imprisoning Nassar for life. Because so many survivors went public, some of the institutions and athletic organisations that protected Nassar, began to implement changes.

In March 2018, MSU agreed to a $500 million settlement for athletes abused by Nassar. In October 2018, Steve Penny, former president of USA Gymnastics, was arrested for tampering with evidence in the Nassar case. His case is still pending.

Congress went on to pass legislation enforcing mandatory reporting of sexual abuse in amateur sports. One week after Nassar’s sentencing, the entire board of USA Gymnastics resigned. One month later, Scott Blackmun stepped down as the chief executive of the United States Olympic Committee, an organisation that also moved to decertify USA Gymnastics as the sport’s governing body.

“Bruce Lee’s vision is alive and well,” Amato said of the series that combines high-energy martial arts with wit and brains. We’re thrilled to renew such a great show for a second season.”

Based on the writings of martial arts legend Lee, “Warrior” was created by and is executive produced by Jonathan Tropper, executive produced by Justin Lin for Perfect Storm Entertainment and executive produced by Shannon Lee for Bruce Lee Entertainment.

“Warrior” is a gritty, action-packed crime drama set during the brutal Tong Wars of San Francisco’s Chinatown in the second half of the 19th century. The series follows Ah Sahm (Andrew Koji), a martial arts prodigy who emigrates from China to San Francisco under mysterious circumstances. After proving his worth as a fighter, Ah Sahm becomes a hatchet man for the Hope Wei, one of Chinatown’s most powerful Tongs (Chinese organised crime family).

Among the critical raves for the current season, which shows at the same time as the US every Saturday at 9am on Cinemax, Rolling Stone called the show a “lush action drama” where “the legend becomes fact in an unexpected, wonderful way with all of the bells and whistles of modern TV,” while IGN praised the series for its “efficient, energetic, and enjoyable [ability to bring] American history to vivid life with verve, intelligence, and memorable fists of fury” and “thoughtful political edge”,

In Thailand, the series is available on HBO GO via AIS Play and AIS Playbox.