Filipino films continue to make headlines at International Film Festivals.
“Bagahe” (which literally means “baggage” in Tagalog), a film about a Filipino domestic worker won the top prize at the 2018 Vesoul International Film Festival of Asian Cinema in France. Directed by Zig Madamba Dulay, won the Golden Cycle Rickshaw award for Best Fiction Film.
“Nervous Translation”, a film of director Shireen Seno, won the Network for the Promotion of Asian Cinema (NETPAC) award at the 2018 International Film Festival Rotterdam in the Netherlands.
In the film Bagahe, a domestic worker named Mercy returns home to the Philippines, and she is accused of dumping her baby in a trash bin in a plane’s bathroom during her flight back home.
The film premiered last August during the 2017 Cinemalaya, an independent film festival in the Philippines. Angeli Bayani, who played Mercy in the film, won the Best Actress award. The film also won Best Screenplay.
Nervous Translation follows the life of a young girl who spends her afternoons mostly alone at home, waiting for her mother to come home, entertaining herself with writing, cooking and listening to the voice recordings her overseas Filipino father sends regularly from Saudi Arabia. The film was inspired by Seno’s memories as a child who was born and raised in Japan by OFW parents.