‘Sally’ travels to Brussels

Rhian Ramos in “Saving Sally”

Avid Liongoren’s “Saving Sally” is competing at the 35th Brussels International Fantastic Film Festival, which was wrapped up in Belgium recently.

Liongoren, who traveled to Europe to attend the festival, told the Inquirer that his film’s screening last week “went well.”

“The audience applauded thrice and was very responsive and warm,” Liongoren recalled. “They asked how I came up with the story.”

The film recounts the unlikely romance between a geeky artist and his best friend, a feisty inventor who is grappling with her own set of problems.

The fest’s website lauded the movie as “an inventive rereading of the concept: ‘Will they get together or not?’”

“Saving Sally,” which combines live action and CGI animation, is “visually … incredibly poetic,” the fest’s site commented, adding that “the modern tale owes much to the magnetic presence of [lead star] Rhian Ramos.”

The site pointed out that Ramos might be familiar to Brussels fest regulars because she also starred in Yam Laranas’ 2009 thriller “The Road,” which was also shown in the same event.

The site reported that the Filipino film, which premiered at last December’s Metro Manila Film Festival, took Liongoren more than a decade to complete.

Liongoren related that audience member Philippe Hennebert had a positive feedback for the film, praising it as “an extremely pleasant surprise.”

According to Liongoren, Hennebert remarked: It’s “visually inventive but coherent, with [its] creativity in the service of deeper subtexts and a moving storyline. [I] wish I’ll be able to watch it again [so I can pay attention to] the little graphical details, and to [confirm] that they are not gratuitous quirks, but [they] all make perfect sense.” Liongoren also participated in one of the fest’s “weird traditions.”

“They asked all the guests to sing,” he recounted. “So I belted out the ‘Transformers’ theme song … very badly. Benta naman! (They bought it!) The point is that killjoys are not allowed in the fest!”