Cinema One Originals Film Festival 2019 Official Entries

Victor Villanueva, who made his debut in the seventh year of Cinema One Originals with the quirky comedy My Paranormal Romance and is also known for the breakout favorite Patay Na Si Hesus, is directing Lucid from a screenplay by newcomer Natts Jadaone, which is about the phenomenon of lucid dreaming but slanted at an angle where it attains a supernatural agency.
 

Alessandra De Rossi plays a young woman who leads a lonely, mundane existence in the real world but who has the perfect life in her lucid dreams which she can somehow control, meets a mysterious stranger, played by JM De Guzman, who challenges her to turn her dream life into something a bit more adventurous. Then her dreams become more real than her reality and the line between the two starts to blur.
 

“It’s a bittersweet movie about the pain of longing, and also of self-empowerment, and it’s new territory for me, the way it switches between bleak and whimsical, meditative to the bizarre. It’s about the clashing of the waking life and the dreamlife, but in a modern Filipino context, escaping the clutter of everyday emptiness. In a world of self-doubt and confusion, do we awaken or stay asleep?” The man of your dreams is on his way but only in your dreams. Kaya mo?

Starring: Alessandra De Rossi & JM De Guzman

With: Peewee O'hara, Bob Jbeili, Bryan Anastacio, Gavin Soriano

Screenplay by: Natts Jadaone

Directed by: Victor Villanueva

A soft boy. A strong girl. Tayo Muna Habang Hindi Pa Tayo is a love story that comes close but not far enough. “Why are there so many love stories? Because it feels good to watch how two people out of billions, find each other and connect.” Denise O Hara, who made her debut last year with the acclaimed Mamang moves to a different genre for her sophomore feature which, despite her seeming optimism, is a love story grounded by anxiety and uncertainty. “It’s all about that moment when one says “I love you” and all the assumptions, repercussions and yes, even traumas that those words carry.”
 

When the one you love is the one you can’t have. Kaya mo?

Starring: JC Santos & Jane Oineza

With: Pau Benitez & Victor Sy

Written and Directed by: Denise O'hara

Yours Truly Shirley marks the return of Regine Velasquez to the big screen playing the eponymous widow of the title who hasn’t quite moved on from the untimely death of her husband in a motorcycle accident and her grief is making her do funny things, like imagining the newest pop sensation sweeping the country is the reincarnation of her dead husband. But is it really all in her head? And just how far will she go to prove it isn’t?
 

“Is there a right response to loss? A proper way to mourn?” These are ultimately the questions Nigel Santos tries to answer in his debut feature, a poignant, funny and ultimately life-affirming exploration on the often complicated and delicate conditions of surrender necessary to move on from the death of a loved one and how those left behind are often fighting for their lives, too. “Letting go doesn’t always have to mean a sad farewell.”
 

What happens when your dead husband is reincarnated in the body of a young pop star? Kaya mo?

Starring: Regine Velasquez

Introducing: Rayt Carreon

With: Romnick Sarmenta, Dennis Padilla, Elisse Joson, Belle Mariano

 Written and Directed by: Nigel Santos

“There are few films about intersexuality.” First time filmmaker J.E Tiglao articulates why it was necessary for him to write the screenplay for Metamorphosis. “Statistically, one out of 2000 is born an intersexual, Most of them are in hiding because of the stigma that’s been attached to their unconventional anatomies. There’s very few support systems, and scientific aid is even more scarce. We need to tell their story. You need to know their story.”
 

Born with both male and female genitals, but raised like a boy by his conservative family, Adam goes through all the things prepubescent boys go through, including a fascination with strange animals he takes for pets and being smitten by a lovely girl. His bucolic world turns upside down when he gets his first menstrual period setting him off on a journey that tests the spiritual and physical limits of sexual identity and into a new world of ambiguity and desire.

The only choice you don’t have is the one you chose. Kaya mo?

Starring: Gold Aceron, Iana Bernardez, Ivan Padilla, Ricky Davao and Yayo Aguila

Written by: J.E. Tiglao and Boo Dabu

Directed by: Jose Enrique Tiglao

This black comedy, in which necrophiliac vampires run funeral parlors to collect blood from corpses which they process into red meth that they sell to their kind,dives deep into the pit of vampire drug culture and the lengths the undead will go for a fix. “It’s about vampires and a romcom with a love triangle, or a love square in our case” O centers on a a funeral parlor intern and closet necrophiliac who starts pushing blood after she meets a vampire drug lord whose sister she falls in love with, complicating matters even more than they already are.
 

“O is an exercise in giving the most clichéd concepts and genres a new flavor,”Kevin Dayrit, who made his feature film debut in the eighth year of Cinema One Originals with the multi-awarded Catnip, cheekily says as way of describing his newfilm, “It’s the same old hotdog, just dipped in peanut butter. It tastes offensive but funny at the same time.”
 

Kagatin o Mabitin? Pati dugo mo, hihingin, Kaya Mo?!

Starring: Anna Luna, Sarah Carlos, Lauren Young and Jasmine Curtis-Smith

Written and Directed by: Kevin Dayrit

Tia Madre is a horror story told through the eyes of a child: a clingy, hyper- imaginative and slightly twisted ten year old girl named Camille whose mother Emilia inexplicably changes into something else, something more sinister, something more violent, something more distant, something that isn’t her mother anymore and quite possibly isn’t human.
 
“I want to make people see and understand that not all people’s childhoods have blue skies with rainbows; and mostly for other people, it’s like a raging storm that never left.” Debuting filmmaker Eve Baswel elaborates on how much her film draws from the slightly darker side of her own childhood. “The panic of forgetting to water the plants in fear of a yantok hitting your legs, the discomfort of having to drink water all day at school because you have nothing to eat, the humiliation of coming to school every day wearing the same unwashed uniform for the past three days. I only get to tell this story once, and I want it to be sad, sorrowful, heartbreaking and horrifying.”
 

TFW your mother’s scares you more than any ghost. Kaya mo?

Starring: Cherie Gil and Janna Agoncillo 

With: Carl Palaganas

Written and Directed by: Eve Baswel

Wrong place, wrong time. This is the fundamental itinerary of any noir. The throwing in of disparate lives into a chaos of circumstance. A freelance videographer, a rookie police office, an undercover PDEA agent, and a crime in progress. Only tonight, a comet flies over Manila and the cosmic disturbances turns everything on its head for one night. Everything that could go wrong suddenly foes right.
 

“Ask any Filipino these days and they' ll tell you that utopia, a perfect world, simply means a world where justice exists.” Dustin Celestino breaks down the title of his debut feature and essentially breaks down its core. “The unjust suffer and the just are unscathed. The police don' t plant drugs on suspects, and follow due-process. Criminals kill each other without collateral damage. A world unlike ours. I hope the film forces people to contemplate our collective destiny as a nation.” Anything that can go wrong will go wrong unless a comet passes through the sky. Kaya mo?

Starring: Joem Bascon, Enzo Pineda, Aaron Villaflor

Directed by: Dustin Celestino

Sila Sila is essentially n LGBT ghost story, or more specifically an LGBT ghosting
story, in which a young man whose breakups tend to be messy and have severe and traumatic repercussions finds himself not only confronting the people on the
receiving end of those breakups but navigating feelings he had thought long gone but are now suddenly rekindled.
 

“What does it mean to ghost someone? To be gone and still be there. How does
one capture that presence, that energy, that feeling? That darkness, that lightness?” Giancarlo Abrahan, who directed the 2017 Cinema One Originals Best Picture winner Paki and is returning this year, poses these provocative questions as a way into his new film, which is another take on group dynamics, focusing this time on a estranged group of friends and the feelings that linger long after the friendship has drifted apart.
 

“Ghosting—this modern horror—does not really deal with a scary event or a monstrous being. But it still deals with fear. A fear that feels and sounds sad and
funny at the same time. Although it isn't exactly friendly ghosting. This ghosting still inflicts pain. It can be deliberate or unintentional, visible or unseen, deeply felt or numbing. This pain has its own form of violence. It is that violence that I am interested in. And that is what the film tries to capture.”
 

What if the one that let you get away comes back? Kaya mo?

Starring: Gio Gahol and Topper Fabregas

With: Bart Guingona, Phi Palmos, Adrienne Vergara, Jasmine Curtis-Smith, Sunshine Teodoro, Jay Gonzaga, Juan Miguel Severo, Meann Espinosa, Kych Minemoto, Thea Marabut, Boo Gabunada, Vincent Paljara

Introducing: Dwein Baltazar

Written by: Daniel Saniana

Directed by: Giancarlo Abrahan

Fresh, cool, vibrant, inclusive, brave, original. The 15th Cinema One Originals runs from November 7 to 17 at Trinoma, Glorietta, Ayala Manila Bay, Gateway, and Powerplant Makati. There will also be screenings at Vista Cinemas in Iloilo and Evia Lifestyle and in Cinema Centenario, Cinema ‘76, Black Maria, UP Cine Adarna, and FDCP Cinematheque Manila.