MANILA – Controversial Filipino director Brillante “Dante” Mendoza lived up to his name to bag the best director award in the famous Cannes film festival for his dark movie “Kinatay” (meaning, massacre).
With his first name from the Spanish word meaning “brilliant,” Mendoza bested past Oscar and Cannes winners like Taiwan’s Ang Lee, Spain’s Pedro Almodovar, New Zealand’s Jane Campion, Denmark’s Lars von Trier and the US Quentin Tarantino.
He is the first Filipino to win the best director prize in Cannes and joined the list of revered filmmakers who have won the coveted award, including Martin Scorsese, Francois Truffant and Ingmar Bergman.
“I feel like floating,” Mendoza told the Philippine Daily Inquirer, the country’s largest circulation daily, in a phone interview shortly after his victory in what is considered the world’s most prestigious film festival. “I’m so happy.”
His movie Kinatay notably features corrupt policemen slowly butchering a prostitute into pieces with blunt kitchen knives.
In his second appearance at Cannes, Mendoza again split the critics, drawing both hisses and applause for Kinatay.
In 2008, Mendoza’s “Serbis” was again in the running for the prestigious award. The movie was set in a Manila porn theater with long close-ups of festering boils and overflowing toilets as well as poverty and distress on the streets.
Still determined to portray the social reality around him, Mendoza in Kinatay traces 24 hours in the day of a trainee policeman, happily beginning in the morning with his wedding to close with the young man’s first outing at night with a band of corrupt colleagues.
To his surprise, fear and anguish, they pick up a prostitute accused of betrayal and wind up torturing, raping, killing and hacking her before disposing of the body parts across Metro Manila.
“This is not just entertainment, these kinds of stories are real,” Mendoza said in Cannes.
Loading ...
Mabuhay ang Pilipino! What a great news noh? I am sick and tired of scandals anymore! Btw, how are you doing bro?