Tropical Malady is a 2004 Thai romantic psychological drama art film written and directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul. The film has a bifurcated structure; it is divided into two segments – the first is a romance between two men, and the second a mysterious tale about a soldier lost in the woods, bedeviled by the spirit of a shaman.

The cinema of Thailand dates back to the early days of filmmaking, when King Chulalongkorn's 1897 visit to Bern, Switzerland was recorded by François-Henri Lavancy-Clarke. The film was then brought to Bangkok, where it was exhibited. This sparked more interest in film by the Thai Royal Family and local businessmen, who brought in filmmaking equipment and started to exhibit foreign films. By the 1920s, a local film industry had started and in the 1930s, the Thai film industry had its first "golden age", with a number of studios producing films.