Mikhail Red on Mikhail Red
Who else can better talk candidly about Mikhail Red than Mikhail Red himself?
“As a filmmaker and storyteller, I grew up in Manila, the capital of a predominantly Catholic country. I personally studied in a Catholic exclusive all-boys school for eight formative years. The school setting is fascinating, serving as a parallel world of adult society that comes after it. In our school, faith and prayer are woven in with the curriculum which served as a foundation for our morals and principles. The belief in the afterlife served as a breeding pool for the acceptance of the supernatural.
“Substantial help for students going through the trials of adolescence remains elusive. I believe with the film, I am able to smuggle in these critical issues and layer it through the horror genre narrative. The perfect integration makes it easier to be digested by the targeted youth and a much wider audience. In the end, Eerie is a story of people caught between the haunting of the supernatural and the natural frailties of the world.”
At 21, Mikhail wrote and directed his first feature film, Rekorder, which had its international premiere at the Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF). His sophomore feature film, Birdshot, won the top prize of the Asian Future section of the 2016 TIFF and became the official selection of the Philippines to the 2018 Academy Awards. Birdshot was later acquired by Netflix, becoming the first Filipino film to stream locally and internationally. In 2017, Mikhail’s Neomanila premiered at the 47th Rotterdam International Film Festival (RIFF).