The long wait is over for actor Ronnie Lazaro

Ecstatic was how Ronnie Lazaro, long revered as one of Philippine cinema’s finest actors, felt after winning the Best Actor Award at the 32nd Gawad Urian held recently at the CCP Complex for the multi-awarded Cinema One Original movie “Yanggaw.”

Lazaro, now 51, admits in full honesty that he has waited some 27 years for this award to come from the prestigious award-giving body, founded by scholars, film critics, and award-winning writers in the 70s. Actually, this is Ronnie’s second after winning the Best Actor trophy in the relatively new Cinema One Originals Film Festival in 2008.

Becoming momentarily oblivious to his audience and to the lengthy rounds of applause that greeted him upon stepping on stage to receive his trophy, the actor who impressed the world with his cinematic gem Boatman in 1985 started his speech in Ilonggo (his native tongue, which was also the language used in Yanggaw) much to the amusement of the audience.

Lazaro received his first nomination for a Gawad Urian in 1982 for Best Supporting Actor for Peque Gallaga’s “Oro Plata Mata.” In 1984, he was nominated for Best Actor for “Boatman” and in 2004, for “Ebolusyon ng Isang Pamilyang Pilipino.”

In “Yanggaw,” Lazaro plays the father of a close-knit family who lives in a faraway town of a province where its denizens strongly believe in superstitious beliefs. When his daughter becomes ill, no doctor could cure her, little did they know that she was slowly transforming into an aswang. This leaves the father torn between his daughter and his family.

In his Urian triumph, Lazaro thanked everyone from his co-stars to Yanggaw’s director and screenplay writer Richard Somes to Cinema One Executive Producer Ronald Arguelles for founding and producing the Cinema One Originals. This is because such digital film festival provided a platform for new film-makers and actors to demonstrate their talents which forever changed the landscape of Philippine movie-making. Since Cinema One Originals’ inception in 2005, a handful of its movies have been attracting attention locally and abroad. “Yanggaw,” in its case, has been exhibited last May in the Hong Kong International Film Festival. In June, it was an official selection and awed audiences in the New York International Film Festival.