Five indies off to Vancouver

EDGARDO Roy Jr.’s “Baby Factory” competes in the Vancouver film fest.

Three Filipino independent films are vying for top honors in the Dragons & Tigers program of the Vancouver International Film Festival, to be held in Canada from Sept. 29 to Oct. 14.

Edgardo Roy Jr.’s “Baby Factory,” Vincent Sandoval’s “Señorita” and Marlon Rivera’s “Ang Babae sa Septic Tank” are competing with five other films from Japan, China and South Korea for the Dragons & Tigers Award for Young Cinema, which comes with a $10,000 cash prize for the debuting director.

In 2006, Filipino filmmaker John Torres won the honor for his indie film “Todo Todo Teros.”

Also included in the Dragons & Tigers section are two more indies: Charliebebs Gohetia’s “The Natural Phenomenon of Madness” and Jeffrey Jeturian’s “Bisperas (Trespassers).”

According to its website, the Dragons & Tigers section is envisioned as a “leader in introducing the most exciting new cinematic talents from East Asia to the world.”

The section is programmed by London-based critic Tony Rayns and Beijing-based scholar Shelly Kraicer.

In the fest’s website, Rayns wrote positively on the five Filipino indies in the lineup.

Rayns said that Roy’s “Baby Factory” “plunges us into an overwhelmingly female world: an extremely busy maternity ward… teasing out a sense of the bigger picture from a close concentration on details.”

Rayns noted that Roy’s debut feature, an entry in this year’s Cinemalaya that was written by Jerome Zamora, was able “to produce a vivid sense of life… the feeling of reality is amazingly strong. The flow of incidents is always credible and engrossing.”

Rayns praised Rivera’s “Ang Babae sa Septic Tank,” a Cinemalaya best film (New Breed) winner, for its “witty writing [by Chris Martinez], spirited performances and a barrage of jokes about prize-winning Pinoy movies [that] add up to a splendid post-modern entertainment.”

Rayns pointed out that Sandoval’s “Señorita,” which competed in Locarno last August, is “splendidly acted, paced and scored.” He described it as “a modern film noir… [that] has inner beauty in spades.”

The critic called Gohetia’s “The Natural Phenomenon of Madness” “a beautifully stylized meditation… [on] relationships and sex.” He hailed it as “radically unlike any other Filipino movie… it’s mesmerizingly grownup.”

The programmer commented that Jeturian’s “Bisperas,” another Cinemalaya best film winner (Directors’ Showcase), is “both dramatic and blackly comic.” He observed that the film, as “a picture of a family falling apart,” has “several targets… religious hypocrisy, the shallowness of contemporary family ties, Filipino political lethargy and the social inequalities which breed crime.”

Rayns remarked that the film’s “aim is true.”