Tsardyer Another Urian Best Picture nominee

The Gawad Urian is all set to take place on May 17 at the Marriot Hotel Ballroom. The event will be telecast at a later date via Cinema One.

I’ve already reviewed some of the Best Picture nominees in the past and I am focusing on the indie movie Tsardyer below.

With the cutthroat competition on TV today, news reporters are compelled to do anything for a story — at whatever cost.

I have no idea what was running in Ces Oreña-Drilon’s head when she negotiated for that interview with an Abu Sayyaf leader in June 2008 and eventually became hostage. But clearly that was for a scoop. It’s easy to dismiss that move as carelessness, but a journalist will find a way to get a big story. She simply wasn’t lucky that time when she — literally — got more than she bargained for. To make matters worse for her, that mission was without the blessings of her mother network.

The synopsis of Tsardyer in the glossy brochure released during the 2010 Cinema One Originals competition where it was an entry says that it was loosely based on a story written by Remly Natividad that appeared in another broadsheet in June 2008.

The article is titled No Way to Lobat! Kidnappers Used Hostage’s SIM Card. As presented on film by Sigfreid Barros-Sanchez, it shows how a band of Abu Sayyaf men kidnap a group of media people from TV and sends a 10-year-old Tausug kid (Martin de los Santos) to charge the battery of their cell phone that they use in negotiating with the studio boss for the release (with the corresponding ransom, of course) of the victims.

The newspaper article may not have been an exact account of Ces Drilon’s experience with the Abu Sayyaf, but the broadcaster was actually consulted during the making of Tsardyer and was asked to share details of what happened to her in the hands of her kidnappers.

An interesting revelation from her may send eyebrows soaring in this society that loves to stereotype its people: The supposedly tough as nails Abu Sayyaf members went through Ms. Drilon’s kikay kit and were amazed by its contents.

The creators of Tsardyer must have also talked to other former Abu Sayyaf victims and I imagine the final product to be a composite of the horror stories of those who fell in the hands of this bandit group.

As a film Tsardyer is significant because it tackles one of the biggest problems of this country — kidnap-for-ransom, especially in the south, which had become an industry in the Philippines. It’s one big business that had given our tourism a huge black eye.

The Abu Sayyaf has also made miserable beyond imagination the lives of the kidnap victims and their kin. They are hoodlums and they should burn in hell.

Tsardyer’s director, who is also credited for screenplay, however, is careful to point out that not all Muslims are bad. In fact, there is a character (played by Neil Ryan Sese), who wishes for nothing else in this world, but for the war in Mindanao to end. Through him, the viewers get the message that Muslims are not the war freaks that most other people in this archipelago picture them to be. All of them are victims of this still unresolved conflict in the south.

Ironically, it is his young son who ends up as the Abu Sayyaf’s errand boy — the one tasked by the notorious group to charge their mobile phones.

The suspenseful parts of the film are actually in the scenes where the kid runs through the jungles — from a house with electricity where the battery charging is done to the Abu Sayyaf lair in the thick forest. Since the phones are the only means of communication between the abductors and the Manila-based studio, the kid’s speed is crucial because a minute’s delay could spell beheading for the captives.

Thanks to Siegfreid’s highly competent orchestration of the film’s technical elements Tsardyer makes for exciting viewing. Malay Javier’s photography captures, particularly in the jungles, all the scenes in the most realistic manner and not once is he tempted to prettify not even a single image — unlike most other cinematographers, who sometimes fall in love with their shots to the detriment of the film’s integrity.

Tsardyer reveals to us the real world, especially in that part of the country, and the scenario can be both frightening and ugly. And it’s not only the rebels who paint a bad picture of that side of the Philippines, but even the military. Tsardyer exposes how some high-ranking officials can be overly concerned with media exposure and their promotion even in the middle of a crisis situation like rescuing kidnap victims.

Of course, the film also depicts the agony of those abducted by the Abu Sayyaf and in the case of the media group in the story, the difficult decisions that have to be made by network executives, who are responsible for the lives of their employees.

To my relief, the director displays true discipline in this film that can never be accused as exploitative. There are no black-and-white characters here either. Sure, the Abu Sayyaf are shown to be bad (because they really are!), but they, too, have their soft side — like their leader showing warmth and affection toward their errand boy, who is actually his nephew.

Tsardyer simply shows us the true situation in some parts of the Philippines. And it is scary.

Aside from Best Picture, the other nominations of Tsardyer include the following: Best Direction, Screenplay, Best Supporting Actor (Martin de los Reyes), Best Cinematography and Best Music (Marco, LC and Ciro de Leon).