EXCLUSIVE: Thai investment and production outfit Kliff Studios, known for backing films including H Is For Hawk, A Useful Ghost and Esarn Seven, has boarded sci-fi drama Algo In The Sky as part of a push into developing a new generation of Thai filmmakers.
The Bangkok-based company is producing the feature alongside fellow Thai production outfits Matlock Stone, Gecco Productions and TSixtySix.
Scheduled to start shooting at the end of March 2027, Algo In The Sky marks the feature directing debut of T-Thawat “Pete” Taifayongvichit, who has also co-written the script with Bryan Ott.
Taifayongvichit has previously worked primarily as a cinematographer on Netflix’s Hunger, Doctor Climax and Terror Tuesday: Extreme. His directing credits include the award-winning short 83 Soi Soonvijai 14 and an episode of hit series Girl From Nowhere.
Set in a near-future Bangkok, Algo In The Sky follows a divorced woman who is asked to help create an AI avatar of her aging former mother-in-law as her own daughter prepares to leave home. The film uses the emergence of increasingly lifelike digital avatars to explore memory, grief and the ways families reshape their recollections of those they lose.
Kliff founders Annie Yang, Chotiphun Tiaviwat and Tanat Tananivit note that this is the first project they’ve joined from the development stage, rather than coming aboard once a film has already been packaged or entered production.
The trio also explain that the local talent drive runs parallel to a strategy to deploy Thai capital into established international productions, building relationships with overseas producers, financiers, distributors and talent that can eventually feed back into its domestic slate.
The company previously backed Philippa Lowthorpe’s H Is For Hawk, starring Claire Foy and Brendan Gleeson, which received a BAFTA nomination for Outstanding British Film; as well as Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke’s A Useful Ghost, winner of the Grand Prix at Cannes Critics’ Week.
Kliff is also a producer on Chantana Tiprachart’s Esarn Seven, currently in post-production, and is backing Songkram Songkran, the upcoming feature debut of Pisinee Khaosamai.
“There is an enormous amount of talent in Thailand, but talent needs opportunity,” said Yang. “The filmmakers who will define Thai cinema over the next ten or twenty years may not have made their first feature yet. Someone has to be prepared to take that first risk with them.”
Tiaviwat added: “Thailand has spent decades building an extraordinary reputation as a place where international films can be made. But we believe the next stage is for Thailand to become a meaningful participant in the financing, development and ownership of those films as well. Thai capital should be sitting at the same table as international capital.”
For Tananivit, Kliff’s international investments and its support of emerging Thai filmmakers are part of the same strategy: “We don’t see international investment and developing Thai talent as separate businesses,” he said.
“When we participate in a film internationally, we learn, we build relationships and we become part of a global network. The question is how you bring that experience and those relationships back to Thailand and use them to create opportunities here.”
Algo In The Sky is being structured as a regional collaboration, with development materials describing it as a potential Thailand-Singapore co-production, rooted locally but capable of travelling internationally following a major festival launch.
Yang added: “Success would be seeing a first-time Thai director we supported today competing internationally a few years from now, while at the same time seeing Thai capital helping make some of the world’s most ambitious films possible. That is the bridge we are trying to build.”
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