Manta Ray

is a film about the Other and all that this philosophical, social, and ethical concept implies. The debut feature film from Thai director Phuttiphong Aroonpheng, strikes a graceful balance between the details of lived experience and a deeper symbolic scope, building its story quietly towards an encounter with the irreducible reality of Others and our responsibility for them. It does so perhaps most stunningly in a scene that embodies what philosopher Emmanuel Levinas calls “the epiphany of the face”: two men face each other in an empty room filled with flashing disco lights, swaying to the music, viewed close-up in a shot-reverse-shot sequence that lovingly and playfully highlights the vulnerable, unknowable nature of a living presence. That it does so with two men whose relationship is undefined, both