Thai Pen-ek Ratanaruang reunites with Christopher Doyle for culinary thriller “Morte Cucina” (exclusive)

Acclaimed Thai director Pen-ek Ratanaruang re-teams with veteran Asia-based cinematographer Christopher Doyle for a subversive psychological thriller set in the colorful world of Thai cuisine.

Titled Death Kitchen, the Bangkok-set film follows a talented young chef named Sao who has a chance encounter with a man who sexually abused her when she was a teenager. “Using her talent in the kitchen, Sao sets her plan for revenge into motion, resulting in a rather unexpected result,” reads the film’s plot.

Death Kitchen is co-written by Pen-ek Ratanaruang and Kongdej Jaturanrasamee (Hunger, Faces of Anna). It will be Pen-ek’s first feature film after his noir thriller Song Samuiwhich premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2017. The project brings together the Thai auteur and Doyle for the first time since their 2003 project together, The last life in the universewhich was Thailand’s official submission to the Oscars that year, and also won its Japanese star, Tadanobu Asano, for Best Actor in Venice.

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

The film recently received funding from the Film Fund Luxembourg and is scheduled to shoot in Thailand in Q4 of this year, with the festival launch and international release slated for 2024. See the first poster for the project below.