This year’s festival is officially scheduled to take place from 5-9 December, across three different venues in the city. As is customary, the entire five-day event will be free-of-charge and completely open to the public for attendance, with the full program schedule to be available as a downloadable app for easy accessibility. In addition to the films presented, this year’s festival will include panels and discussions, live evening performances, as well as special screenings and discussions around these additions.
The visual theme of this year’s festival will feature the iconic gecko as a regional mascot, paying homage to the rich biodiversity of Laos.
As always, official selections for the program were made by filmmakers and critics from across Southeast Asia and represent a curated selection of the finest contemporary films from their respective nations. This year, Blue Chair expects to showcase a slate of films from at least 10 of 11 regional countries, including Laos, Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines, Myanmar, Brunei, Singapore, Cambodia, Indonesia, and Malaysia. By working with regional expert curators with an inside understanding of their communities’ film scenes, Blue Chair presents a unique program that consistently delivers some of the strongest voices from across the region.
Among the festival’s supporters this year are The Asia Foundation, Heinrich Böll Stiftung Southeast Asia, Laos Buffalo Dairy, and EXO Travel. The event is produced in collaboration with the Luang Prabang Department of Culture, Information, and Tourism. Longtime hotel partners across Luang Prabang are also supporting the event, in addition to local businesses, community organizations and individual donors. Blue Chair is also a fiscally sponsored project of Film Independent, a US-based non-profit independent media arts organization.
