This article analyses Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s 2010 film Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Loong Boonmee raleuk chat) in terms of its representations of transmigration and reincarnation, with a particular focus on its use of Super 16 mm film at a time in cinema history when photochemical film is experiencing its own existential transformation. This formal strategy is considered as both a corollary of the film’s central themes and a broader historiographic exploration of the very nature of cinema at the point of its evolving film-to-digital representational base and a broader ‘life cycle’ of birth, death and beyond.