Special Mention
"For the accuracy with which the director looks at his country’s most disadvantaged, uncompromising but full of humanity"
Opening Film - Camera Lucida Section
"Slumdog Millionaire" meets "Trainspotting".
A shocking and magical feature film based on a best selling novel - with songs. "In the slums we meet the crippled pimp, the lonely housewife, the neighborhood gay, his macho father, the prostitutes, the smalltime politician, the Yankee pedophile. There are no happy endings and death awaits at every corner. Tragedy lies not at the end but is a given situation. It is not the usual ''story that needs to be told'' it is simply a backyard full of lovable fuckers." -- Khavn De La Cruz
Mondomanila is a 2012 Filipino crime comedy drama film directed by independent filmmaker Khavn. It is based on thework by Norman Wilwayco, who also co-wrote the script with Khavn. It premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam in January 2012.
Mondomanila merges drama, musical, horror, experimental, and exploitation cinema. It tells the story of teenage anti-hero Tony de Guzman and the rough neighborhood he calls home.
Tony de Guzman is an anti-hero. Life, according to him, is short, brutal and is never on your side. Grab what you can, when you can. Settle scores. Be randy. Defy the rules. Cheat the system. Tough it out.
Tony knows nothing but tough times living, as he does, in the bleak circus of the slums he calls home amongst denizens of the underworld: the crippled pimp, the lonely housewife, the neighborhood gay and his macho father, the prostitutes, the small-time politician, and the Yankee pedophile. This is his story and the story of the world he lives in: a hopeless, closed-in decrepit world gone to seed.
Mondomanila is an unflinching and unflinchingly funny look at life in the underbelly of the urban diaspora—-with songs.
Best Director
