Mindanao - A Found Story with Animation and Inteconnecting Plot on Love, Death and Reality

Mindanao, an official entry to the Metro Manila Film Festival 2019, already got its world premiere abroad and screened at the following prestigious international film festival: 24th Busan International Film Festival, 32nd Tokyo International Film Festival, 25th Kolkata International Film Festival , 23rd POFF Talinn Black Nights Film Festival and 41st Cairo International Film Festival. Judy Ann Santos won Best Actress for Mindanao at 41st Cairo International Film Festival and  Mindanao also bagged the The Henry Barakat Best Artistic Contribution Award for the same festival.

Mindanao is a new movie directed by the award-winning filmmaker Brillante Mendoza, written by Honee Alipio and creative consultant by Armando Lao.

Mindanao is about Saima (Judy Ann Santos) who spends the final days of her sickly daughter Aisa at the House of Hope in Davao City while waiting for her husband Malang (Allen Dizon), a combat medic, to come back home from an offensive operation in the province of Maguindanao. Saima witnesses how other patients have triumphed over cancer while some did not. Malang witnesses how death awaits on the battlefield as he tries to save the wounded soldiers where some survived and some did not.

Saima mirrors the harrowing life in Mindanao by retelling the epic tale of Rajah and Sulayman to Aisa – a story of two warrior brothers who fight against the dragons, Ginto and Pula. The crayon images of the tale interweaves the battle realms of Malang and of Aisa. Despite the bleak circumstances, Saima remains hopeful that both daughter and husband escape the impending death.

Here is what Brillante Mendoza says about his 15th full length feature film, Mindanao:

Death has always been occasioned in the Filipino experience. The families, relatives distant land, friends and even politicians take part in the lamay or the practice of mourning to send off the dead to the next life.

Pakikiramay or compassion to the bereaved loved ones is a social duty of everyone related to the dead. The film "Mindanao' started with a research on children with cancer temporarily sheltered in House of Hope in Davao city. Majority of the patients are children from all over  Mindanao.

Upon discussion with Armandao Lao, we have decided to look for Army personnel whose kid suffered or have survived cancer, and that was the beginning of compounding two eminent deaths - death caused by line and death caused by war. One of the parents we've interviewed shared that during the last minute of her son's life, son told her that he is climbing the beanstalk from the story she used to tell, the fairy tale of Jack and the Beanstalk.

The writer researched for a common folktales in Mindano, one of the tales is the epic tale of warrior-brothers Rajah Sulayman and Indarapatra against two fire-breathing sea serpents (dragons). The heros' conquests and tragedy mirror the main character's (Saima) harrowing reality.

The experiences of the people in the epic tale and the current people of Mindanao is still very much the same, death lurks behind them. It was such sad realization for us. Thus, we ended up merging the epic tale with the story of Saima (Judy Ann Santos), a Maguindanaoan mother to an ailing child of cancer and whose husband is a combat medic (Allen Dizon) deployed in an offensive operation in Mindanao.

I envisioned the epic tale to be in animated images. We took time in the development of the animation, and I am happy with the rendition of the animators, truly we can proud of their craft and talent, and I may say this film is also a tribute to the animation artists of our country.

I also hope that the Filipino children to enjoy the film, it may be the first animation they'd see that the characters look like them. Lastly, this film is my first to tackle about the philosophy of death on a Filipino perspective - real and imagined. In battle, those who survived are awarded with medals. In the battle with cancer, those who survived are celebrated. But all those who died, we do not want to forget.

I would also like to pose a question to everyone, death cause by illness is ugly, death caused by war is ugly, but when does death becomes futile?

Joining Judy Ann Santos and Allen Dizon in the film are, new kid actress Yuna Tangog which Mindanao is her first film, Ketchup Eusebio, Epy Quizon, Vince Rillon, and Ruby Ruiz. Mindanao is graded A by the Cinema Evaluation board and as part of the 45th Metro Manila Festival opens December 25, 2019 in PH cinemas nationwide.