Wanted: Border
An Ilonggo masterpiece on Cinema One
“Mama Saleng is a religious fanatic who thinks she can give redemption to others. So, she ends the misery of her problematic boarders by killing, cooking and serving them in her carinderia.”
Rosanna Roces as Mama Saleng, a religious fanatic.Wanted: Border is perhaps one of the best Ilonggo films ever made for television and we will get to see it on Cinema One this November. Its Manila premiere will be on Nov. 13, 2009.
Wanted: Border stars Rosanna Roces as Mama Saleng, a landlady who kills her boarders, for religious reasons. Yes, the title of the movie had been mispelled as “border” because screenwriter and director Rey Gibraltar, a true-blooded Ilonggo, said that the movie wanted to portray the dark side of society through a non-linear manner. What does this mean? “The story does not follow the three-act structure of storytelling. The audience will feel that they are inside the nightmare itself,” said Gibraltar.
Rey Gibraltar talks to Rosanna Roces.“The story borders on blasphemy. Mama Saleng is a religious fanatic who thinks she can give redemption to others. So, she ends the misery of her problematic boarders by killing, cooking and serving them in her carinderia, which is just downstairs from her boarding house,” he said. Gibraltar assures that this is not a violent flick. “The actions are suggestive. You won’t see it but you know that murder, rape or abuse is taking place. The movie engages in a mind game and that’s where the hold on the audience comes from,” he said.
The material for Wanted: Border had been conceptualized by Gibraltar in 2007, which he just kept until an opportunity to realize it, comes. Then, Cinema One selected this story among seven other independent films that they produce annually. One requirement for the grant from Cinema One was to use a mainstream actor, that is Rosanna Roces. The rest of the cast are Ilonggos from Iloilo and Bacolod City. The main actors are Kristoffer Rhys Grabato, Raffy Tejada, Publio Briones, Sunshine Teodoro, AJ Aurello and Marisol Alquizar.
“This movie has multi-characters. There are many of them but I want each to stand out. Each role is important,” he said.
The shoot took place in Miag-ao for six days and in Guimbal for two days. The scenes were inspired by life in Manila – crowded and so much angst, enough to show that “our society has become cannibalistic. We are already eating each other alive,” said Gibraltar.
Gibraltar decided to kill Rosanna’s character in the end. “I just have to end the dark side of society,” he said. “That’s my stand in life and I used film to make that stand.”
Gibraltar is a graduate of the Mowelfund Film Institute in 2001. In 2008, his “Timawa Meets Delgado” earned an Urian nomination and included in the Indio Bravo Filmfest in New York. “Hupa”, a Moonrise Awardee, was his collaboration with Oskie Nava, an Ilonggo filmmaker. He is now working on “Tagular”, a story on ancestral spirits, and funded by the National Commission for Culture and Arts.
