Thailand’s Oscars entry is taking the world by storm. It’s coming to the UK and Ireland next

Themes of family, love, and duty in How To Make Millions Before Grandma Dies have resonated with audiences around the world

How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies (Screengrab)

Thai blockbuster How To Make Millions Before Grandma Dies, one of the 15 films shortlisted under the International Feature Film category at the Oscars, will be released in cinemas across the UK and Ireland next week.

The only Southeast Asian film shortlisted in its category, How To Make Millions Before Grandma Dies has been a hit both at the domestic box office and with critics. Grossing an estimated $78.3m worldwide, the film has become the highest-grossing Thai film of 2024 and eleventh-highest of all time in the country even, as well as breaking box office records in other Asian countries.

The family drama is Thai director Pat Boonnitipat‘s feature film debut, and follows a cancer-stricken woman named Mengju (Usha Seamkhum) and her college dropout grandson M (Putthipong ‘Billkin’ Assaratanakul), who volunteers to take care of her in the hope of an inheritance. There are others also in the running: Mengju’s conscientious daughter and single parent to M, Sew (Sarinrat Thomas), well-to-do son Kiang (Sanya Kunakorn), and youngest son Soei (Pongsatorn Jongwilas), who desperately needs money to pay off his gambling debts.

How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies (Jor Kwang Films)

The film was released in Thailand on 4 April and released internationally in competition at the 23rd New York Asian Film Festival on 17 July. It came to the attention of a broader audience online earlier this year after Tiktokers posted videos of themselves crying after watching the film.

Clips posted to social media showed theatre workers handing out tissues prior to the film screening, which added to the curiosity around the film.

Co-writer Thodsapon Thiptinnakorn based the film on his relationship with his own grandmother, while Boonnitipat drew on his mother’s life.

“The mother in the movie is based on my own mother,” he told the Financial Times. “She always catches everyone in the family when they fall, but who catches her? . . . I wanted to question what it means to love your family when there are so many unspoken hierarchies.”

Leads Seamkhum and Assaratanakul have received praise from critics, especially considering this was the first major role for both. Seamkhum, 78, was discovered in a video of a seniors’ dance contest, while Assaratanakul is a popular Thai singer who has acted in sitcoms before.

The film’s themes of love, duty, and family have touched a chord that seems to be universal.

“People were telling me that the movie, which is about a traditional Chinese family, will naturally do well in a Mandarin-speaking country. But when it did well in Indonesia, I realised that the story is universal,” Boonnitipat said at a screening of the film in Singapore.

“Everyone can relate to the bond between a grandmother and her grandson.”

On M’s motivations for choosing the role of carer and the journey he goes on, Boonnitipat explained how money often ties in with love in families: “Love and money so often become substituted for one another. From when you are a child, you receive money in red packets from your elders and you start to associate that with love. When you grow up, you realise that maybe you’ve mixed some things up.”

Boonnitipat also described moving in with his 92-year-old grandmother while developing the script to get a more authentic depiction.

“We spent a lot of time together and I asked her so many questions like, ‘What would you do if this happened?’ and ‘Who would you give your inheritance to?’,” he told Deadline.

The film was released on Netflix in September in several Asian countries, and became the fourth-most viewed programme on the streaming platform in the Philippines in its debut week.

According to UK distributor Vertigo Releasing, How To Make Millions Before Grandma Dies will be released across 50 to 60 screens on 26 December.

The final shortlist of the five films that will be nominated for the Best International Feature Film award at the 97th Academy Awards will be announced on 17 January, with the winner being announced at the ceremony on 2 March.

In the past, nine films from Asia have won in the International Feature Film category, but none yet from Southeast Asia. Winners include Japan’s Rashomon (1951), Departure (2009), and Drive My Car (2021), South Korea’s Parasite (2019), Iran’s The Salesman (2016) and Taiwan’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000).