Cebuano film "Señorita" premieres in Locarno Switzerland filmfest

CEBU, Philippines - A transgender sex worker who gets entangled with local politics and leads a double life. Such is the premise of "Señorita," a feature film by Cebuano filmmaker-actor Vincent Sandoval.

"Señorita" is competing in Festival del film in Locarno, Switzerland under the Filmmakers of the Present category.

Other contenders under the same category are: "It's the Earth Not the Moon" - Portugal, "Mr. Tree" - China, "Nana" - France, "The Color Wheel" - USA, "The Strawberry Tree" - Canada, "The Student" - Argentina, "Without" - USA.

For 64 years Festival del film Locarno has held major film festivals every August where around 160,000 cinemagoers, 1,000 journalists and 3,000 professionals converge on the small Swiss-Italian town of Locarno, right in the heart of Europe. Locarno is known for discovering brilliant new talents and launching them to the world, like Stanley Kubrick and Gus Van Sant.

The FREEMAN learned that in Locarno's 64-year history, only three Filipino films have been chosen to compete in the prestigious filmfest. The first was Celso Ad Castillo's "Burlesk Queen" with Vilma Santos, and the other was Brillante Mendoza who won in 2005 for "Masahista".

Sandoval, who is now based in New York, returned to his hometown in Cebu to film "Señorita". He said: "Cebu was perfect. It was home," he said. "We auditioned the rest of the key roles there. We had a much smaller pool to work with, but we ultimately landed the right actors."

Two of those key roles were played by former staff members of The FREEMAN — Roy Sevilla Ho and Stella Palomo Monteno. Ho played corrupt Mayor Charlie Tiongson while Monteno was Donna's confidante, Nanay Ruby.

Ho, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Sandoval said, "The movie is set in Manila but we shot the entire film in Cebu. We shot the small town scenes in Liloan. The big city scenes were shot in Cebu City, Mandaue and Talamban. "

"Señorita" tells the story of Donna, a transgender woman, who wants to quit sex work in Manila and start a new life. She gets her chance when an old friend asks Donna to look after her 12-year-old son Tomas while she works overseas for a year. Donna moves to a small town to look after Tomas only to find out that the town mayor who is seeking re-election is a crony of one of her regular clients back in Manila. In her efforts to break away from her past, she becomes entangled in the town's local politics and ends up leading a double life.

Sandoval said of the feature film: "Theme-wise, 'Señorita' unabashedly borrows from classic noir: A wayward woman (oftentimes the femme fatale) runs away from a dubious past that inevitably catches up with her. But I wanted to do it a little differently: This time, the femme fatale is a transgender woman. More importantly, the femme fatale – more than simply the cause of the unwitting hero’s downfall – becomes the emotional center of the story." (FREEMAN)