Butterfly and Flowers is a 1985 Thai drama film directed and co-written by Euthana Mukdasanit, set in Muslim-majority southern Thailand. The film was screened at the 1985 Hawaii International Film Festival, one of the earliest Thai films to gain exposure outside Thailand. The film is adapted from a 1978 novel of the same title by Nipphan (Makut Oradee), which won the award at the Thailand National Book Fair. The book has become a required reading for secondary schoolchildren in Thailand. Regarded as one of the best Thai films ever made, Butterfly and Flower highlights the hardships faced by a boy who works selling popsicles at the local train station and forced by economic circumstance to smuggle rice across the Thai-Malaysian border. Aside from exposing Thai audiences to regional poverty, the 1985 movie broke new ground by portraying a Buddhist-Muslim romance. Butterfly and Flower delighted the Thai public when it earned a Best Film award at the 1986 East-West Film Festival in Honolulu.

Cast