Special Screening Out-of-Competition: “Manila” by Raya Martin and Adolfo Alix, Jr.

Filipino director Raya Martin, who screened Independencia yesterday in Un Certain Regard, is under the spotlight again for a Special Screening of Manila, a feature-length film he co-directed with countryman Adolfo Alix, Jr. It is a story of three characters with different paths: a drug addict desperately trying to re-connect with his family, the mayor’s son’s bodyguard who discovers his boss’s true face after a shootout, and a film director shooting a romance. Manila expresses the violence and resentment endemic to Filipino society today.

In 2005, the same year he graduated from the University of the Philippines Film Institute, Raya Martin became a Cinefondation filmmaker-in-residence. Last year, he was lauded at Directors’ Fortnight for Now Showing, a feature on which Adolfo Alix, Jr. was credited as associate producer. Alix has completed one feature so far, Donsol, the only Philippine film to be selected by the US Academy Awards as a Best Foreign Film candidate. Note that a third Philippine film is at the Festival this year, screening in Competition: Kinatay by Brillante Mendoza.