Pop Aye(HKAFF 2017)

People have many different ways of dealing with mid-life crisis, but it’s hard to imagine a cross-country road trip with an elephant being one of them. Unwanted both at work and at home, architect Thana is undergoing a serious existential crisis. When he runs into Pop Aye, an elephant that he remembers fondly from his childhood, Thana decides to take his old friend back to his village in the countryside. Singaporean director Kirsten Tan – who lived in Thailand for a brief time as a t-shirt vendor – used her own experiences to shape this delightfully offbeat road movie. Marked by eccentric characters and poignant messages about modernization, Pop Aye is a rare road film where both the journey and the destination prove to be equally rewarding.