Thai filmmaker Prachya Pinkaew knows a thing or two about action movies and action heroes. Anyone who has seen his showcase for the Nijinski of Thai Boxing, Tony Jaa, in Ong Bak or Tom Yum Goong can verify that. Now Prachya has created a film for 23 year old Nicharee Wimistanan, titled Chocolate. The word is that Nicharee has been studying under martial arts master Panna Rittikrai for the past three years.

In Chocolate, Nicharee portrays an autistic young woman, half Thai and half Japanese, the daughter of a yakuza. She witnesses her mother being beaten by some gangsters. While the film is still going through a final edit, it still created a stir at the film market sidebar of the recent Bangkok International Film Festival, where the film has already interested international distributors. We will have to see if the mop-headed Nicharee and Chocolate become as popular as the then unknown Zhang Ziyi became after a little film called Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.