Director Showdown – Round 1, Match 7 – Apichatpong Weerasethakul vs. Ava DuVernay
August 20, 2025
Director Showdown turns 7 episodes old today! In this series, we pit 64 of the biggest directors to debut since 1998 against each other in an elimination bracket to determine who will walk away the greatest director of the last 26 years!
In the last episode, we looked into Joanna Hogg and Jason Reitman’s approach to autobiographical — or semi-autobiographical — filmmaking. How each artist explored the impact of people around them on their view of themselves, or the people closest to them. Pitting The Souvenir against Saturday Night, Hogg ultimately came out on top and advanced to the next round!
This week, we move into finding the first competitor for the fourth matchup of that next round….
We start with the heavy hitter, the first director in this series to win a Palme d’Or for his work, Apichatpong Weerasethakul! Born in 1970, Weerasethakul (or sometimes “Joe”) grew up in a traditional Buddhist family, and got his bachelor’s degree in architecture in 1994. Before even finishing school, he’d already made his first short film, and would go on to debut his first feature, Mysterious Object at Noon, in 2000. In 2010, Weerasethakul finished a multi-platform art project, “Primitive”, which culminated in the film Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives winning the Palme d’Or at Cannes Film Festival. Uncle Boonmee would go on to be selected as the Thai submission for the International Feature Oscar at the 83rd Academy Awards, but would not be selected. But despite not being recognized by the Academy, Uncle Boonmee was and continues to be recognized by many critics as one of the best films ever made.
Facing off against Joe is Ava DuVernay. DuVernay has proven herself a force as both a narrative and documentary filmmaker. Her 2017 documentary 13th was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary feature, making DuVernay the first black woman nominated for that award. Her 2014 film Selma was nominated for Best Picture and Best Original Song at the 87th Academy Awards. She’s additionally directed A Wrinkle In Time for Disney, produced 2021’s The White Tiger, and written, directed, and created shows for HBO, Netflix, CBS, and others. DuVernay’s 2023 film Origin combines all those skills, DuVernay adapting the book “Caste: The Origins of our Discontents” by Isabel Wilkerson into a hybrid docudrama about Wilkerson’s life and the idea of caste.
In this episode, we’re taking a look at how the most distant past affects the present. How trauma seeps through generations, and ultimately forms the very society we live in today. Not all of us can recall our past lives, but there must nevertheless be an origin of our discontents.
Joining us on today’s episode is Zachary Lee! Zachary is a freelance film critic who has written for RogerEbert.com, MovieWeb, Letterboxd, and many more sites. Recently, he wrote a few pieces about the film The Monkey, at least one of which we briefly talk about in this episode.
You can find more of Zachary over on Twitter and Letterboxd!
Finally, check out the RogerEbert.com review of Origin that Zachary mentions in this episode, written by Robert Daniels
This episode was inspired by Rotten Tomatoes’ Best Director Showdown, which was conducted among RT users over the summer of 2023. The results of that competition are summarized in this article.
Special thanks this week to our good friend Cris, who made the cover art for this episode! Follow her on Instagram, Twitter, and Letterboxd to see more of her artwork, film opinions/reviews, or both!
