Judy Ann Santos, Jeanne Balibar and Stacy Martin are set to star in “Aid,” Philippines auteur Brillante Ma Mendoza’s new political drama, which is being launched to worldwide companions on the Cannes Film Market with Hearth & Ice Media hooked up as delegate producer alongside France’s Ghost Metropolis Movies and the Netherlands’ Human Movies.
The undertaking can be anticipated to be one of many first options produced below a bilateral co-production settlement signed by France and the Philippines in Cannes final 12 months.
“Aid” follows a revered NGO employee dedicated to defending Indigenous Aeta kids within the Philippines who finds herself more and more entangled within the broader equipment of worldwide humanitarian assist. Santos performs Ruby Dela Cruz, the pinnacle of a grassroots group serving Aeta communities, whereas Martin performs Angelique Dumont, a European humanitarian govt overseeing assist operations throughout Southeast Asia. Balibar, who has labored with Arnaud Desplechin, Mathieu Amalric, Olivier Assayas and Jacques Rivette, and in addition performs as a singer and stage actor, rounds out the principal forged.
Santos beforehand collaborated with Mendoza on “Mindanao” (2019), profitable finest actress on the Cairo Movie Pageant. Martin’s current credit embody Brady Corbet’s “The Brutalist,” Lars von Trier’s “Nymphomaniac” and Michel Hazanavicius’s “Godard Mon Amour.”
“I wanted to understand why, despite all the aid, so little truly changes. I realized that even good intentions can be swallowed by systems larger than the people trying to help. That unsettling truth is why I made ‘Aid,’” Mendoza stated.
Mendoza will shoot the movie on location at an Aeta village in Pampanga, his residence area and a spot whose dialect he speaks. Manufacturing is about to start in October.
Liza Diño of Hearth & Ice Media described the undertaking as “a film that trusts its audience to sit with discomfort – to witness how care becomes complicity, and how the machinery of aid can outlast the people it was built to serve. This is cinema that doesn’t look away.”
Ghost Metropolis Movies, headed by producer Franck Priot, can be behind “Zsazsa Zaturnah,” directed by Avid Liongoren, which is about to world-premiere at Annecy subsequent month. “Do ends justify any means? This is the question raised by ‘Aid,’ and the strong yet very different backgrounds of our actresses will help Brillante’s story resonate in a universal way,” Priot stated.
“For Human Films, ‘Aid’ represents exactly the kind of bridge we set out to build — between European and Asian storytelling traditions, between arthouse ambition and urgent contemporary relevance. Co-productions like this don’t just cross borders; they reshape how we see them,” stated Pavel Feldman of Human Movies.
Mendoza is among the many Philippines’ most internationally acknowledged filmmakers, with work premiering and receiving awards at Cannes, Venice, Berlin and Locarno.
