Breaking the Cycle review – meet the charismatic Thai politician striving to change his country’s history

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Gripping documentary examines the Future Forward Party’s unprecedented 2019 election result, and its leader’s aim to break Thailand’s repeated military coups With his disarming good looks, pro-democracy activist and businessman Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit resembles an actor rather than a typical Thai politician. Heir to the country’s largest car manufacturer, he is blessed not only with personable charisma but also inexhaustible funds. His stunning rise into public consciousness is the beating heart of Aekaphong Saransate and Thanakrit Duangmaneeporn’s debut film, a thrilling documentary about an extraordinary political campaign that shook a nation. As founder of the progressive Future Forward Party (FFP), Juangroongruangkit’s central message cut through the noise of electoral politics: secure a brighter future by correcting the wrongs of the past. Since the end of absolute monarchy in 1932, Thailand has undergone a never-ending cycle of military takeovers, including 12 coups. Dur...
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The Gallery review – bloody interactive treatise on post-Brexit Britain

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Viewers can choose the outcome of the characters in this cleverly assembled art-world thriller available on PC, console and your local screen

Interactive cinema has existed since the 1967 Czech film Kinoautomat, but remains niche, despite a brief flare-up of interest around Charlie Brooker’s choose-your-own-adventure Black Mirror episode Bandersnatch. British director Paul Raschid – ambitiously for a 30-year-old – specialises in tending these mind-boggling gardens of forking paths. His latest The Gallery is a trenchant and thoughtful post-Brexit treatise that can be played on PCs and consoles, but it’s also doing the rounds in cinemas, where the group experience – including voting by glowstick – could work something like a referendum on modern Britain, given the film’s state-of-the-nation bent.

The Gallery has two separate but symmetrical timelines in 1981 and 2021. Plus ça change: both spotlight a reeling and fractured Britain in which the Argyle Manor gallery, about to put on a portrait exhibition, becomes a microcosm for their respective social tensions. In the 1981 timeline, Morgan (Anna Popplewell), a young gallerist in a twinset, is taken hostage by bitter northern painter and would-be revolutionary Dorian (George Blagden). In 2021, Popplewell and Blagden switch roles, but the dilemma is the same: cede to the hostage-taker’s demands to hand over a prize portrait (of Thatcher in the first timeline; of a social-media influencer in the second), or get “Jackson Pollocked” by the bomb under their chair.

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