A screening of the Cannes prize-winning comedy A Useful Ghost, a camp satire starring a haunted vacuum cleaner, as part of the Queer East 2026 festival.
A Useful Ghost is coming to HOME on Monday 16 November, a Cannes prize-winning comedy from writer-director Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke. It's a 130-minute film, and the screening is part of Queer East, a cross-disciplinary festival that brings together queer cinema, live arts and moving image work from East and Southeast Asia and its diaspora communities.
The story follows March, played by Witsarut Himmarat, a man grieving the death of his pregnant wife. She died from dust pollution, a real and ongoing crisis in Thailand, and the film doesn't shy away from that. March finds some comfort when he meets her again, though in a form he certainly didn't expect: she's come back as a haunted vacuum cleaner. It's a wildly camp setup, and the vacuum cleaner becomes a sort of allegory for Thailand's turbulent political past, while March's family and friends look on in complete bemusement. The whole thing is described as a satire, so it's as much about the absurdity of the situation as it is about the grief behind it.
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Queer East is the wider context here, and it's a festival that showcases boundary-pushing queer cinema and live arts from East and Southeast Asia and its diaspora communities. A Useful Ghost fits right into that, bringing a Thai story to a Manchester screen. The film runs for 130 minutes, and the age certificate is still to be confirmed, so it's worth keeping an eye on that if you're bringing anyone younger along. The screening is on Monday 16 November at HOME.
