DURATION : 83 MINS

COUNTRY: THAILAND

CAST :  THANWADEE  HEMARA , AKASIT  HEMARA

DIRECTORS :  PANU AREE , KONG RITHDEE , KAWEENIPON KETPRASIT

PRODUCERS : CHALIDA UABUMRUNGJIT , PANU AREE,

CONCEPT & SCRIPT : PANU AREE , KONG RITHDEE, KAWEENIPON KETPRASIT
                     
VIDEOGRAPHY : KAWEENIPON KETPRASIT , PANU AREE , THANWADEE HEMARA ,  AKASIT HEMARA

EDITOR : KAWEENIPON KETPRASIT

SOUND : PAIRAT  WADEE , AKASIT HEMARA

MUSIC :  AKASIT  HEMARA

Like 95% of Thai people, June is a Buddhist. She lives in Bangkok and runs a small second-hand clothes shop and works in the editorial department of a  magazine. All of that changes when she decides to marry Ake, a devout Muslim man from the southern province of Satul after visiting his hometown for 10 days. June becomes Muslim – veiled and monotheist. She quits her job, leaves her family, and the couple moves to a southern island to start a new life where she learns to pray, fast, follow the Prophet's teachings, and above all, believe in one God.

The Convert is a feature documentary about one woman’s journey, from one faith to another, from the metropolis of Bangkok to the Islamic South, from the old life of certainty to a new one that is unfamiliar, elusive and yet full of hope.

Directors’ Statement

Ever since the 9/11 terrorist attack in New York, being a Muslim has become somewhat of a shortcoming, even a burden, just about everywhere around the world.  (This is also true in Thailand, where 95 percent of the population is Buddhist. Only three percent are Muslim, and the majority of them live in the country’s southernmost provinces bordering Malaysia. Since 2003, an outbreak of violence committed by separatist movements in the South has plunged the region into chaos, and further strained the image of Thai-Muslims.

In 2006, short filmmaker Panu Aree, critic Kong Rithdee, and post-production specialist Kaweenipon Ketprasith, co-directed In Between, a 40-minute documentary on the lives of four “moderate” Muslim men living in Bangkok. The idea of The Convert came to us soon after we finished In Between, and the concept crystallised when we met June, a woman who had just gotten married to Ake, a Muslim man from the southern province of Satul. The production of The Convert began in September 2006.

What drove us to explore June’s story is the curiosity of her decision, a life-altering move for a young, fun-loving Bangkok woman who had known next to nothing about Islam but who now embraces not only a new God, a new faith, but also an entirely new lifestyle. All newlyweds must soon encounter the tension of domestic living, and in June’s case, that tension seems to double when she finds herself in a completely new environment, living amongst Ake’s family in the South.

We seek neither to investigate the essence of being a Muslim, nor to counter any preconceptions. We only believe that, through our observant eyes and patience, we can reflect certain values of society through the experience of this individual.