MANILA, AUGUST 5, 2013 – ‘Sana Dati’ and ‘Transit’ cleaned up at this year’s Cinemalaya Film Festival, winning a clutch of honors at yesterday’s awards night.
‘Sana Dati’ – a love story about a woman whose wedding is stopped when a mysterious person arrives and reminds her of the man she really loves – won for Best Film, Jerrold Tarog, won the Best Director and Best Original Music Score, Best Supporting Actor for TJ Trinidad, Best Editing by Pats Ranyo, Best Cinematography by Mackie Galvez, Best Production Design by Ericson Navarro and Best Sound for Roger TJ Ladron.
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‘Transit’ was another multiple winner in the New Breed category – it took the Special Jury Citation, while Jasmine Curtis Smith won for Best Supporting Actress, Benjamin Tolentino and Hannah Espia Best Editing, Mon Espia for Best Original Music Score, the Audience Choice Award and Irma Adlawan as Best Actress.
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The film takes place in an airport during a father and son’s transit flight from Tel Aviv to Manila and revolves around a Filipino single-dad working as a caregiver who comes home to see his child and finds out that the Israeli government is going to deport children of foreign workers.
“I pray this film gets shown. With God, all things are possible. I want my dreams to scare me. What you have to do is to believe,” Paul Soriano, the executive producer of ‘Transit’, said in his speech, while editor and director Hannah Espia added: “If there was any award our team wanted, it was this. We went to Israel with two tripods and LED lights.”
In the full-length category, Vilma Santos won the Best Actress prize for her role in ‘Esktra’, a drama-comedy film, which follows a seemingly usual day in the life of an extra shooting a soap opera. Jeffrey Jeturian also picked up the Audience Choice Award for Directors’ Showcase.
‘Quick Change’, competing in the New Breed category, saw Eduardo Roy Jr win Best Screenplay and Michael Idioma for Best Sound in a film that revolves around a woman who believes she is incarcerated in a male body.
In the short feature category, ‘Houseband’s Wife’ bagged the Best Film and Best Screenplay for a story that focuses on a husband and wife who are separated by circumstances and the trials they endure. Other winners included ‘Taya’ with a Special Jury Prize and ‘Sa Wakas’, which received a Special Citation in dealing with the topic of abortion.
Joey Paras from ‘Babagwa’ won the Best Supporting Actor in a film about an internet scammer who falls in love with a wealthy spinster while trying to swindle her using a fake Facebook profile. In the end, the male character is fooled. “This is like an Anne Hathaway award, it’s not winning or losing that matters but giving our best performances in the live screen,” said Paras at the awards.
