Human Resource

Official Selection, 2025 Venice Film Festival
Official Selection, 2025 Busan International Film Festival

SDAFF favorite Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit returns with an incisive look at what happens when we treat people as resources. Fren (Prapamonton Eiamchan) works in HR. Part of her job is to interview candidates for her company, painfully aware that only desperate people would work there. When an employee vanishes, she must replace her while grappling with her own complicity in the causes behind her colleague’s disappearance.

She’s also pondering what to do with the embryo growing inside her. Does she tell her husband Thame (Paopetch Charoensook)? They’ve been trying for two years, but maybe she can pretend to keep trying a little longer while she weighs her options. How badly does she want to bring new life into the late-stage capitalist nightmare where she is both gatekeeper and prisoner?

Thamrongrattanarit (Fast & Feel Love; Mary is Happy, Mary is Happy; Heart Attack; 36) ventures into darker territory as he examines seemingly small choices in a world where lives can be bought, sold, and erased. Can Fren—can we—live as decent people within systems we designed to exploit?

– Wilda Wong