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Midnight My Love (เฉิ่ม), Kongdej Jaturanrasamee’s quietly aching 2005 film about a taxi driver and a massage-parlour worker finding each other in Bangkok after dark, has joined Thailand’s National Film Heritage list for 2026. Starring Petchtai Wongkamlao – better known as comedian Mam Jokmok – and Woranuch Wongsawan, it’s a love story with the city’s night shift running through it.
The film is one of 12 films and moving-image works selected in the programme’s 16th annual registration. The announcement was made on October 4 at the Thai Film Archive in Salaya, Nakhon Pathom, on Thai Film Conservation Day.
For a film that spends so much of its running time driving through Bangkok at night, the recognition feels particularly apt. The archive describes Midnight My Love as a record of the city during a major period of change, as well as a love story and a significant work in its director’s and lead actors’ careers.
Petchtai plays Smbat, a taxi driver attached to old songs and AM radio. One night he meets Nuan, played by Woranuch, who works at a massage parlour. Their relationship grows in a city changing faster than Sombat’s carefully preserved world.
And Bangkok is never really just the backdrop.
Its night roads, taxis and passengers become part of the film’s emotional landscape. The archive notes that Kongdej often weaves the social and political conditions of his time into his films. Here, Bangkok is a destination for people seeking opportunity and a better future.
That makes Midnight My Love particularly interesting to revisit now. Its Bangkok still feels familiar, but more than 20 years have passed since Kongdej sent Sombat out into the night. The taxis are still there. The loneliness is, too. Much else has moved on.
A different side of Mam Jokmok
Midnight My Love marked a striking departure for Petchtai, already one of Thailand’s best-known comic performers when it was made.
As Sombat, he slows everything down. Shy, gentle and absorbed in old songs, radio dramas and familiar routines, the character calls for a restraint audiences might not have expected from Mam Jokmok. The archive singles out the role as a showcase for his dramatic range.
For Woranuch, the film was her first feature. She plays Nuan, a sex worker at a massage parlour whose life is far removed from Sombat’s routines. Her profession shapes her circumstances, but the relationship develops around two people whose lives have taken very different turns.
Woranuch won Best Actress at the Bangkok Critics Assembly and the Starpics awards for the role, according to the archive. Kongdej also won Best Director and shared Best Screenplay with Dear Dakanda at the Bangkok Critics Assembly.
The film travelled well beyond Thailand, too. Its international premiere was at the 2005 Busan International Film Festival, in the A Window on Asian Cinema programme. Busan’'s archive describes a love story that brings an urban sensibility to the familiar subjects of city nightlife and taxis.
Midnight My Love later screened at festivals including Karlovy Vary in 2006. That festival’s archive also records its Best Screenplay award at the 2006 Deauville Asian Film Festival.
The 12 works joining the National Film Heritage list
Midnight My Love joins a decidedly eclectic group. This year’s selection spans nearly a century of Thai moving-image history, from early footage and ethnographic films to politically significant documentaries and contemporary cinema.
The selection includes the following films and collections, with English translations supplied for descriptive Thai titles :
- Khon (1929)
- The film archive of Dr Boonsong Lekakul (1947–1987)
- News Crew Travels to Red China and North Vietnam in 1957 (1957)
- The Heroin Production Process (1957–1962)
- Thai ethnic-group film collection from Encyclopedia Cinematographica (1964–1965)
- The Knight of the Magic Sword (อัศวินดาบกายสิทธิ์, 1970)
- Facts About the Events of October 6, 1976 (1976)
- Our Land (แผ่นดินของเรา, 1976)
- WESTWÄRTS...Südostasiatinnen in der BRD (Westwards...Southeast Asian Women in West Germany, 1989)
- Midnight My Love (2005)
- Syndromes and a Century (2006)
- Dao Kanong (2016)
The programme reaches beyond the country’s most famous films to moving images important to its history, society, culture and cinema, including material at risk of being lost. New additions are announced each year on October 4, Thai Film Conservation Day.
For Midnight My Love, the appeal goes beyond nostalgia. It caught Bangkok in a particular mood – its night shifts, working people, radio songs and restless push towards the future – and preserved that version of the city inside a love story.
Twenty-one years later, that’s a pretty good reason to keep watching.
Where can you watch Midnight My Love?
Craving a late-night Bangkok taxi ride? Midnight My Love has a Netflix Thailand listing, with Thai audio and English and Thai subtitles. Check the title in your Thai Netflix account for current availability before planning a rewatch.
The Thai Film Archive in Salaya has previously screened it on 35mm, including at an April 25 2026 event honouring Mam Jokmok. Keep an eye on the archive’s cinema programme for future big-screen screenings.