“HAPPY New Year”
Filipino filmmaker Joseph Israel Laban’s documentary, “Happy New Year,” won best film (Melhor Filme) at the III Festival de Finos Filmes in São Paulo, Brazil last May 10.
The lone Philippine entry, Laban’s film competed with works from Germany, New Zealand, Greece, among others.
This latest honor is “personally significant,” Laban told the Inquirer, “because it is my first film award for a docu.”
Laban, who won international awards for his Cinemalaya film, “Nuwebe,” produces docus for GMA 7. “‘Happy New Year’ was my first attempt at cinéma vérité, too.”
The docu was previously shown at the 13th International Festival Signes de Nuit in Paris, France.
The film takes place at the Tondo General Hospital on New Year’s Eve, a busy time for doctors and nurses who must attend to firecracker victims and women in labor.
Laban explained: The film “offers an unfiltered look at birth and death, which naturally occupy the same unnatural space in one of Manila’s poorest and oldest districts.” Bayani San Diego Jr.