Anak Selatae (Sons of the South)
Anak Selatae (Sons of the South) follows the journey into manhood of several young Malay-Muslims from the troubled province of Pattani in southern Thailand. Every year, the young men, who work as low-wage migrants in neighboring Malaysia, return home to the village. This time they are being called back for the annual military draft.
The recruitment comes at an ominous time. A bitter conflict between government troops and Malay-Muslim nationalist insurgents has killed more than 4,000 over the past five years. For the Malay-Muslim recruits, the draft holds a bitter irony: they are being asked to sacrifice their lives for a country that has failed to include them as Muslims and ethnic Malays in its vision of a monolithic Buddhist Thai culture.
The draft uses a nail-biting lottery with two random and potentially fateful outcomes for the recruits: return to their Malay lives on the fringes of Thailand, or become a soldier in the military of a country that has shown little understanding of their religion and little sympathy for their communities.
Filmmaker Orlando de Guzman is editing in the U.S. and Asia.
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