Dir. Apichatpong Weerasethakul. 2000, 89 mins. 35mm. In Thai with English subtitles. In this formally inventive and dizzying film, filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul embarks on a collective storytelling process. Early in the film, a woman recounts to the camera a painful moment from her past. When she is finished, the filmmaker asks if she has other stories to tell, real or fictional. This invitation leads her to share a bizarre encounter in which a round object fell from a woman’s pocket and turned into a young boy. From there, Weerasethakul asks community members to continue telling the story, embellishing the narrative from the point where the last teller stopped. In the process of narrating fabricated events, the interviewees also reveal details about their own life experiences and perspectives, both in outright descriptions and through the narrative details they choose to ascribe to the tale of the young boy. Shot on 16mm black-and-white film, Mysterious Object at Noon moves between interviews and scenes where the fabricated story is acted out, while the construction of the story serves as a catalyst for revealing deeper truths.