Lekha Shankar | Pattaya plans to reinvent itself as Unesco Creative City for films

Pattaya, the ever-popular beach and family destination for Indian tourists, now aims to become a film city. In fact, it’s working at becoming a “Unesco Creative City” for films.

The Pattaya Film Festival, now in its second year, is a starting point. Although no Indian films were screened this year, festival director Chalida Uabumrungjit let on that they did plan to incorporate Indian films in their future editions.

“Indian films have always been popular in Thailand, and today streaming agencies like Netflix have given them a huge boost,” said young Thai filmmaker ‘Adam’ Chalermchatri Yukol, mentioning that films like Maharaj, Maharaja have become a hit with Thai audiences.

Chalermchatri Yukol and his father, the legendary filmmaker Chatrichalerm Yukol, have been huge Indophiles, and Adam has even visited the Ramoji Studios in Hyderabad, to study the workings of a megalith movies complex.

The articulate youngster heads the film and TV series sub-committee of the National Soft Power Strategy Committee, also called THACCA (Thailand Creative Culture Agency), which is a very important segment of the current Thai government.

The agency has identified 11 ‘soft power’ industries to promote, including, films, festivals, tourism, and others.

That’s why the ministries of culture and tourism, together with the Pattaya City Council, took part in an important panel discussion, last week, on “Pattaya, as a Film City”.

Since Pattaya is already well-known as a tourist city, sports city, family city, and so on, they agreed that the city had all the necessary infrastructure, to develop it into a film city. This included its importance as a destination both for film festivals, as well as for film shootings.

Many Indian films have been shot in Pattaya. The numbers are expected to shoot up, with the new 20-30 per cent cash rebate policy introduced by the Thai government, as well as tax rebates for foreign actors participating in film shootings in Thailand.

According to Dr Panidapa Suankaew, of the Thai Film Office, there are 31 Indian film-projects in the pipeline, worth about 240 million baht. There is also a mega Indian film The Forgotten Army with a budget of 200 million baht.

With the Thai government promoting secondary destinations, one heard that the cash-rebates would increase, if the foreign films were shot there.

In this connection, we visited the Isaan region of northeast Thailand, in particular the charming provinces of Sakhon Nakhon and Nakhon Phanom, with their mountains, temples, cultural festivals, not to forget the lush Mekong River, and easy accessibility to Laos. It could well become a new location for Indian film shootings, and the director of the local TAT office (Tourism Authority of Thailand), Saowanee Khonkla, said they would be totally supportive.

As per the statistics of the Thai Film Office, in 2023, nearly 466 foreign films were shot in Thailand.

And in the first half of 2024 alone, more than 238 films (from 31 countries) were filmed here.

Among these, were Hollywood productions like Ms Marvel, The White Lotus (Season 4), and the big-ticket The Alien.

Apinat Siricharoenjit, of Living Films, the company responsible for coordinating the biggest Hollywood film productions in Thailand, stated that that they needed more Thai crew and equipment, to cope with the high demand. “For The Alien, we needed 800 sky-panels, but had only 300” he informed.

A lot of equipment came from China, who also co-produced many Thai films. There were many investors from Russia too for Thai films.

He said that Thailand maintained the highest standards for international film shootings, including hiring health and safety officers (trained by Disney Studios), and sustainability departments, which was why it attracted so many international production houses.

Nuanvan Daraswasdi, of the Thai ministry of culture, informed us that they are part of the top film markets of the world, for the global distribution of Thai films.

They had visited the film markets at the Goa and Mumbai film festivals too, but Covid re-appeared. They now plan to revisit the Indian film festivals.

According to Chalermchatri Yukol, the main advantage of Pattaya is that the EEC Corridor is close by, and its “open door policy” could translate into becoming a “one-stop centre” for international film shootings.

Yukol also brought up the present tourism-campaign to promote the Asean countries together.

“Vietnam, Indonesia, Cambodia have great sites for film shootings, Malaysia has a film council, Singapore has a good business model; so it would be good for the Asean countries to collaborate together, rather than compete,” he proposed.

In Thailand, the main advantage for foreign film shootings, of course, was the cash rebate scheme.

Yukol informed that they planned to do a roadshow in Mumbai soon, to explain the various soft power projects of the Thai government, especially the offers for film shootings in the country.

“India is a key market for us,” he declared.