A Tale of Thousand Stars

Picture a city boy who has never lived without electricity, stepping off a mountain road with a backpack and a borrowed purpose. That is Tian (Mix Sahaphap Wongratch) in A Tale of Thousand Stars (นิทานพันดาว). After a heart transplant, he learns that his donor was Torfun (Aye Sarunchana Apisamaimongkol), a volunteer teacher in the remote village of Pha Pun Dao, and her journal sends him up the mountain to take her place.

The village does not make it easy. The kids test him on day one, and the villagers keep comparing him to Torfun. Then there is Phupha (Earth Pirapat Watthanasetsiri), the chief forest officer, who would happily put Tian on the next bus to Bangkok. So Tian rolls up his sleeves. He picks tea leaves and feeds the chickens next to the villagers, and slowly the whole place starts to call him their teacher.

Torfun's journal holds one wish she never got to fulfil: counting a thousand stars with Phupha. As Tian grows closer to the stern officer, he starts to wonder whether the pull he feels belongs to him or to the person whose pages he keeps reading. Uff, what a question to carry up a mountain.

Down in town, a powerful merchant named Sakda keeps squeezing the villagers on the price of their tea, and Tian's stubborn sense of fairness puts him right in the middle of it. Nam (Nammon Krittanai Arsalprakit), the village doctor and Phupha's best friend, and Longtae (Khaotung Thanawat Ratanakitpaisan), the village chief's son, widen the circle around the two leads. My tip: watch in the evening, wrapped in a blanket, so the night sky on screen matches yours.