Brillante competing with 19 directors at Cannes Filmfest
It’s back to Cannes for Brillante “Dante” Mendoza who is competing for the Palme d’Or (Golden Palm) with 19 other directors at this May’s 69th film festival, from the 11th to the 22nd. The first time Dante competed in Cannes was in 2009 and he won Best Director for his film Kinatay (Butchered), beating such heavyweights as Quentin Tarantino and Ang Lee. Dante’s entry,
Ma’Rosa, is pitted against Toni Erdmann by Maren Ade (Germany); Julieta, Pedro Almodóvar (Spain); American Honey, Andrea Arnold (UK); Personal Shopper, Olivier Assayas (France); La Fille Inconnue, Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne (Belgium); Juste La Fin Du Monde/It’s Only the End of the World, Xavier Dolan (Canada); Ma Loute/Slack Bay, Bruno Dumont (France); Paterson, Jim Jarmusch (USA); Rester Vertical, Alain Guiraudie (France); Aquarius, Kleber Mendonça Filho (Brazil); Mal De Pierres, Nicole Garcia (France); I, Daniel Blake, Ken Loach (UK); Bacalaureat, Cristian Mungiu (Romania); Loving, Jeff Nichols (USA); The Handmaiden (Agassi, The Handmaiden); Park Chan-Wook (South Korea); The Last
Face, Sean Penn (USA); Sieranevada, Cristi Puiu (Romania); Elle, Paul Verhoeven (Netherlands); and The Neon Demon, Nicolas Winding Refn (Denmark).
Ma’Rosa is about Rosa (Jaclyn Jose) who owns a small community convenience store connected to their home in the slums of Metropolitan Manila. Together with her husband, Nestor (Julio Diaz), they use their store as a cover-up for selling illegal drugs. Their fate changes one night when a neighbor, Bong-bong (Timothy Mabalot) who works as a fly-by-night parking attendant, begs her to sell him a small pack of methamphetamine without knowing that it’s a ploy for a pending buy-bust operation leading to Rosa’s and Nestor’s warrant-less arrest by a police team headed by SP04 Castor (Mark Anthony Fernandez).
The policemen command Rosa to reveal the source of illegal narcotics as trade-off for their freedom. Hesitant, she has no choice but to call Jomar (Kristoffer King) and cooperate with the policemen. But despite the latter’s arrest, the policemen inform the couple that they still need to pay P50,000 for their freedom. Pushed against the wall, Rosa seeks help from her children, Jackson (Felix Roco), Raquel (Andi Eigenmann) and Kerwin (Jomari Angeles) as they do the unthinkable. Jackson sells all their appliances while Raquel painstakingly borrows money from their poor relatives. On the other hand, Kerwin sells his body to his gay benefactor — all of these just to buy the freedom of their parents.
Ma’Rosa is a long-overdue reunion for Dante, Jaclyn and Julio (who is recovering from a brain surgery after he suffered an aneurysm). The three of them first worked together years ago in Takaw-Tukso, directed by William Pascual with Jaclyn and Julio as lead actors and Dante as production designer. The movie won awards at the Gawad Urian: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress (for Jaclyn), Best Screenplay (for Bing Lao) and Best Production Design.
Aside from being the director, Dante is an executive producer of Ma’Rosa and the production designer. Other members of the production team are Harley Alcasid (art director), Odyssey Flores (director of photography), Diego Dobles (editor), Albert Michael Idioma (sound designer), Maria Theresa Barrozo (musical director), Ninay Castinlag and Raymund Anthony Gutierrez (assistant directors)
Ma’Rosa is Dante’s fifth stint in Cannes. He debuted in 2007 with Foster Child screened in the Directors’ Fortnight, followed by Serbis in 2008 (Competition), Kinatay and Taklub (2015, Un Certain Regard, won Ecumenical Jury Prize).
Australian director, screenwriter, producer and of Mad Max series fame George Miller heads the jury who will award the prestigious Palme d’Or (Golden Palm).
Dante was also the first Filipino to compete and won in three major international film festivals, including (besides Kinatay in Cannes) Captive which competed in the 2012 Berlin International Film Festival; Tirador (Slingshot) which won the Caligari Film Award in 2007;
Thy Womb, won the La Navicella Venezia Cinema Award in the 2012 Venice Film Festival; and
Lola, nominated for the Golden Lion in 2009. But his most notable achievement is when he won the elusive Best Director in the well-renowned Cannes Film Festival for the film, Kinatay in 2009. The year before, his film,
Serbis (Service) was nominated for the acclaimed Palme d’ Or Award.
His debut film, Masahista (The Masseur, with Coco Martin in the titular role) won the Golden Leopard Award in the 2005 Locarno International Film Festival in Switzerland and paved the way for the rise of Alternative Cinema in the Philippines.
Dante is the head of the ongoing Sinag Maynila film festival, sponsored by Solar Films, which will have its awards night on Sunday, April 24.
Recently, the French government decorated Dante with the Chevalier dans l’Ordre
des Arts et Lettres or Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters. No Filipino director has been accorded the singular distinction of being ranked with the likes of renowned filmmakers Bernardo Bertolucci and Dario Argento. Dante’s films are commercially shown in France, affording the cinema-loving French audience a glimpse of contemporary Philippine society.