侬塔瓦特·纳姆本查珀 Nontawat Numbenchapol

Nontawat Numbenchapol was born in 1983 and grew up in Bangkok. He is a Thai film director and television screenwriter, who is widely recognized for his documentary work. He graduated from the Visual Communication Design Department, Faculty of Art and Design, Rangsit University.

In 2013, Numbenchapol finished his first documentary film BOUNDARY, funded by Busan International Film Festival and Art Network Asia. The film depicts points-of-view of local people at the Thai-Cambodia border that have never been recognized. Numbenchapol received the Young Filmmaker award from the Bangkok Critics Assembly and BOUNDARY screened across many film festivals such as Berlin International Film Festival, International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), and Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival.

In the same year Numbenchapol completed his second documentary BY THE RIVER, about the Klity villagers affected by water lead contami- nation. It became the first Thai film to receive the Special Mention award from the Locarno International Film Festival.

In 2016 Numbenchapol created an hybrid docu-fiction #BKKY, a story of a teenage girl, “Jojo,” questioning life and identity. Jojo’s character is a compilation of 100 teenagers interviewed in Bangkok about their loves and dreams and coming-of-age just after graduating high school. It premiered in October 2016 at the Busan International Film Festival before it received the Jury Award for best feature-length film from Lesbisch Schwule Filmtage Hamburg, Germany.

In 2016 Numbenchapol began research on the Thai-Myanmar border on the Shan ethnic minority, resulting in two film projects in development. SOIL WITHOUT LAND is his fourth feature-length documentary which premiered in the International Feature Film Competition section at Visions Du Reel 2019. DOI BOY, currently in development, is his first fiction feature.