TOKYO (AP) – Cannes-winning Brillante Mendoza is among the three directors tapped by the Tokyo International Film Festival to create “Reflections,” a trilogy that depicts the intertwining of stories among Asian nations.
Be it a Filipino worker in Japan or a Japanese bureaucrat in love with a Cambodian woman, the main characters are old and lonely, caught in an Asian nation other than their own, in films that reflect the real-life erasing of barriers in this region.
Premiering Wednesday, “Reflections” marks the first production effort by a festival still struggling to gain stature. And so the work is a heartwarming experiment, despite its relatively modest budget of 10 million yen ($100,000) for each of the three sequences.
Mendoza’s poetic piece “Dead Horse” centers on an elderly Filipino, who is deported after having worked for decades as a laborer in Japan, betting on horses as well as taking care of them.
His state is actually common: Filipinos are the most numerous foreigners in Japan, after Koreans and Chinese. Mendoza did research, talking to Filipinos working in Japan. And shooting in the snow meant a fun challenge for Mendoza.