Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Memoria Announces Innovative Release Plan

Just when you thought you’d seen everything, Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives) is hitting us with a brand new kind of viewing experience. Weerasethakul is teaming up with Neon to screen his new film, Memoria, as—effectively—a traveling art exhibit.

Neon explained that the film will be “moving from city to city, theater to theater, week by week, playing in front of only one solitary audience at any given time.” It will only be available to watch in theaters, not streaming or on demand. Neon founder and CEO Tom Quinn explained that this unconventional choice was put into action to “build a sort of traveling mecca of cinema that has the capacity to stop us in our tracks.” Weerasethakul seconded that notion, explaining that “For Memoria, [the] cinema experience is crucial or maybe the only way. Let’s embrace the darkness and dream, one at a time.”

Memoria stars Tilda Swinton as Jessica, a British woman who owns a flower shop in a small town in Colombia. One night, she wakes up to a loud, mysterious noise, and is thrust into a strange, dystopian ghost story. Also in the cast is Elkin Díaz, Jeanne Balibar, Juan Pablo Urrego, Agnes Brekke and Daniel Giménez Cacho. The film made its debut at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year, and was awarded the Grand Jury prize. It was also recently announced as the Colombian entry for Best International Feature Film at next year’s Academy Awards. And now it has a distribution method befitting one of slow cinema’s modern masters.

You can first catch Memoria on December 26 at the IFC Center in New York where it will play for one week before hitting the road.