ENGKWENTRO

Directed by Pepe Diokno
Official Site - http://engkwentro.com/
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/engkwentro
April 23, 2010 – 7PM
By Invitation Only


Awards:

• Premio Orizzonti for new trends in cinema (Venice Film Festival)
• Lion of the Future Award for Best Debut Film (Venice Film Festival)
• Special Citation (Cinemalaya 2009)
• Nominated for 2010 Gawad Urian (Best Picture, Best Direction, Best Actor, Best Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Editing, Best Sound)

CAST

Felix Roco ... Richard
Bayang Barrios ... Jo
Celso Ad. Castillo ... Mayor Danilo Suarez
Zyrus Desamparado ... Tomas
Jim Libiran ... Hitman
Moises Magisa ... Father
Daniel Medrana ... Raymond
Eda Nolan ... Jenny-Jane

Synopsis

Inspired by true events, "Engkwentro" tells the story of Richard and Raymond, two teenage brothers on opposite sides of a gang war. Richard is the leader of his gang, "Bagong Buwan" ("New Moon") while Raymond is just being inducted into "Batang Dilim" ("Children of the Night"), a rival gang led by charming solvent boy, Tomas.
Complications arise at a deadly midnight "engkwentro" (clash), when Tomas gives Raymond the task of killing his older brother.

All this happens while the City Death Squad lurks the streets. This real-life vigilante group is allegedly backed by the omnipresent Mayor Danilo Dularte Suarez, and is responsible for many unsolved murders of teen gangsters. Today, they are hunting down Richard. Will they take the younger brother, too?

Director’s Bio - Pepe Diokno

Pepe Diokno is a writer-producer-director from the Philippines, born in Manila on August 13, 1987. "Engkwentro" is his first feature-length film. It is inspired by a year of Pepe's research, visiting minors in jails around the Philippines for a documentary in 2007.
Pepe is an undergraduate at the University of the Philippines Film Institute. His next project is a feature-length narrative about children warriors within the Islamic insurgency in southern Philippines.