Nonzee is a relative of Lieutenant General Phachoen Nimitbutr (เผชิญ นิมิบุตร), Director of the Signal Department of the Royal Thai Army and the founder of Thailand's first television station, Army TV Channel 5. Nonzee graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in visual communication design from the Faculty of Decorative Arts at Silpakorn University in 1987. Classmates included Wisit Sasanatieng and production designer Ek Iemchuen. He started his career as a director of television commercials and music videos.
His next film was Nang Nak, a thriller based on a popular Thai ghost story, also scripted by Wisit. A famous ghost story that has been depicted in many Thai films and television series, the story is about a husband comes home from war and takes up living with his wife and newborn son who, unbeknownst to him, have died while he was away. The moodily framed horror film won numerous awards, including best picture at the Thailand National Film Awards.
Both Young Gangsters and Nang Nak were hits at the box office and were credited with reinvigorating the Thai film industry.
Pan-Asian production
With his third film, Jan Dara, Nonzee began a trend of pan-Asian film production in the Thai industry, bringing in Hong Kong actress Christy Chung to star in the erotic drama. He also sought funding from studios outside Thailand.
Ahead of its release, Jan Dara was controversial because its sexual subject matter, involving incest, rape and abortion, tested the bounds of Thailand's 1930 Censorship Code. The film was released with the board's cuts for the film's commercial run in Thailand, but it was available uncut for film festivals.
He co-founded his own production company, Cinemasia, with his production partner, Duangkamol Limcharoen. She died in 2003.
Continuing on his path of pan-Asian production, Nonzee initiated the horror trilogy, Three, in which he and two other directors, Hong Kong's Peter Chan and Korean director Kim Ji-Woon, each directed a segment.
Recent work
While keeping busy as a producer, he directed 2003's OK Baytong, a topical, contemporary drama about a young man who must leave the Buddhist monkhood and go to Muslim-dominated southern Thailand to attend to the affairs of his sister, who was killed in a train bombing.
In 2005, he directed a short film, The Ceiling for the Asian Film Academy, in conjunction with the Pusan International Film Festival. The 18-minute, English-language film starring South Korean actors is the story of a young writer who climbs into the crawlspace above her apartment and spies on the woman living next door.[1]
Another film mentioned as being in development by Nonzee is a ghost thriller, Toyol, a Singaporean co-production about a pair of Hong Kong children who move with their father to Bangkok and are introduced to a stepmother they do not like, in a house that has some problems, namely, the toyol.[4]
