On the road to bigger things

MANILA, Philippines - Hannah Espia meets us in a boardroom for the interview, shyly smiling and apologetic for being fully made-up because of a photo shoot earlier. Later, she is going to do another interview for a TV network. In the next few days, she’ll resume the international filmfest rounds in Hong Kong and Tokyo. 

That’s how things are like these days for the 26-year-old Transit director, as she embarks on an “unbelievable” journey for her first full-length film to hopefully become the first-ever Filipino entry to secure a spot among the final-five contenders for Best Foreign Language Film of the forthcoming Oscars.

“I can’t believe this is happening. It didn’t have time to sink in because suddenly, I was busy with a lot of stuff,” Hannah tells The STAR one Thursday afternoon.

 Produced by Paul Soriano, Transit, which debuted at Cinemalaya Independent Film Festival last August and swept awards including Best Picture and Best Director for Hannah, spotlights the plight of OFWs amidst a new law in Israel that deports children of migrant workers. The Oscar campaign got a boost when Hollywood producer Dean Devlin acquired the world-sales rights to the film, plus the Special Mention at the recent Busan Filmfest and positive press from The Hollywood Reporter and Variety, which praised the film as an “impressive debut…gracefully directed and inventively edited” by Hannah.      

“The road is rough but we’re getting there,” shares Hannah about their Oscar plans, “As we go, I don’t know, things just happen. It’s the same with a lot with this film. Everything just falls into place. Wala naman kaming major roadblocks so far.”

Transit somewhat hit — not exactly a roadblock — but a bump when it was announced as the country’s bet to next year’s Oscars. Being chosen over the works of the more seasoned and awarded directors like Brillante Mendoza’s Thy Womb and Erik Matti’s OTJ, which were already making waves abroad, courted some controversy.  

Hannah says, “I think it was mainly because it was so last-minute. What happened was the Film Academy of the Philippines (first) released a shortlist of eight films and we weren’t part of it. The next announcement from FAP was the selection already and parang Transit came out of nowhere, parang they didn’t have a second announcement that they added some films to the shortlist. But we got a letter requesting for a screener. So, we submitted. Then later on, we found out that to qualify, we had to have a commercial run of at least a week.”

Hannah recalls being the most hesitant about a commercial run at that time, doubtful in the first place of the film’s chances against the heavyweights, but direk Paul thought it was worth the risk. “Paul is really a risk-taker, he took a risk producing this film. He’s been taking really big risks (for this).”

While she admits to getting affected initially, she has learned to brush off the issue. “At first, it affected me. When that happened, I had to stay away from Twitter. People were saying a lot of bad stuff. But when I thought about it, I don’t think these people were saying (those things) against me personally. When I detached myself from that issue, things started to be okay. Parang it was only the initial reaction from being surprised at the selection.”

It’s not just the film that’s been said as “having come out of nowhere” but also Hannah herself. She’s been deemed an “overnight sensation” (although the UP Diliman film graduate did a short titled Rueda that merited the Audience Award in the 2012 Cinemalaya) because her first full-length scored success. And did we already mention that she’s only 26?

“I think people have this impression that I got this easy because one of the hardest things (for a new filmmaker) is finding a producer for your film and it just so happened I found my producer right away. I always say I was at the right place at the right time,” muses Hannah, who first met Paul at a Film Financing Forum.

“When I was pitching this film to other producers, people were telling me that I was crazy because this was my first film, to be shot in a different country, in a different language… But when I pitched this to Paul, he liked it and things just started to fall into place… If it’s ‘overnight,’ at least I got my chance and I’m doing my best. A lot of people don’t even get the chance.”

Hannah continues, “For a lot of young directors, I think the problem is getting recognized — getting people to believe that they can make films, and hopefully, this proves that I can make a film and people will invest in my projects so I can make more. Being young is one of the most important factors (in all this), I think, because people can’t believe it. But there are younger directors. People (tell me), you’re young and you’re female, but I just say, I’ve never let my age and gender stop me from doing what I love to do.”

But it seems Hannah has always been destined for this field. Named after the title character in the Woody Allen film Hannah and Her Sisters, she is the second child in a brood of four. Her dad is a musician, who used to be the guitarist of Gary Valenciano and played for the band Labuyo. Her father actually created the score for Transit and earned a Cinemalaya award for it.

It was also her father who exposed her early to the world of cinema. Hannah, a big admirer of such Asian filmmakers as Shunji Iwai, Zhang Yimou and Park Chan-wook and Filipino directors Jose Javier Reyes and Chris Martinez, says, “Our family loves films. But the film that made me decide to become a director was the Japanese movie All About Lily Chou Chou (by Shunji Iwai). I watched it when I was 16. My high school was also really creative. I was making films since I was 15 pero siempre mga pangit. I used a normal home video camera, but what I really enjoyed from the beginning was the editing.”

The idea of Transit came to her when she was “stalling in college,” taking odd jobs, getting into photography, serving as an intern/production assistant to her professors and helping out in the family business, a travel agency specializing in Holy Land tours, which was run by her mother. 

“It was in 2011, my first trip to Israel. On the way home, we met an OFW who was carrying her baby, who was very restless throughout the 12-hour flight. So, madaming lumalapit sa kanya, madaming concerned, people were asking her, why she didn’t bring the baby home when the baby was a bit older. Then she said, bawal kasi. I later learned it was because of the deportation law.”

She reflects, “A sad reality for film schools and art schools, in general, is that a lot of the graduates don’t pursue the arts. I thought I was going to be one of those people. If I didn’t get that experience (working for the family business), I wouldn’t be able to think of a concept like this.”

Hannah further nurtured the concept through film camps abroad. When it was shooting time in Israel, they hardly encountered problems, thanks to the connections of their travel agency, who did a lot of the paperwork, and through their Israeli producer, Tony Copti, who helped with the locations and the hiring of  Israeli actors. They were also endorsed by the Israeli Embassy in the Philippines.

“For me, I felt that it was just a story that needed to be told. I just want them (moviegoers) to know about it and having that effect, ‘we didn’t know this was happening.’ What we were surprised to know was how the Israelis are reacting to it. When we showed this film at the Cinemalaya, we invited the people from the Israeli Embassy. Initially, we were afraid that they would react negatively. But they really loved the film. It was a good sign. We haven’t screened in Israel but we’re working on showing it there because we got a lot of help from the Filipino community there. They want to watch it because they feel that it’s their film also.”

Amidst all this busyness, Hannah is already thinking of her next project — either a full-length or a documentary — about the “short encounters of long-distance lovers.”

She’s fascinated by “the idea of how brief everything is, like you get to see each other for two weeks, (followed by) months of uncertainty. Relationships like that, it has no point, except that you just want to be together — apart. You just want to make it work,” says Hannah, who is in a long-distance relationship herself with a Slovakian filmmaker she met at a film camp in Serbia.

When asked how she’s finding her “newfound life,” Hannah says, “Sobrang nag-iba yung life ko. Last year, this time, I was still working for my mom. It was a typical 8-to-5 day job.”

“My typical day now is different,” she confesses, adding in a whisper and with an embarrassed laugh, “I’m doing stuff like this (interview).

“I’m actually an introvert, whenever I go out, I get drained, so inaasar ako ng mga kasama ko sa Transit that I have my cave moments, magkukulong ako sa isang kwarto. Whenever I can, I just lock myself in a room and recharge my social skills (laughs).”

All these exciting, new experiences can be overwhelming, so she’s drawing support and counsel from family, friends and experienced colleagues like “Paul, who’s like a big brother, from whom I can ask stupid questions like what do I say in interviews.”

“Everyone is keeping me grounded” and more grateful — which is one of the advices she dispenses to youngsters who want to do films like her.

 â€œWhen you’re given the opportunity, always do your best, as some people blow it. Be nice because it’s a really tough industry, and people are not always going to be nice to you, but you have to be nice to them, even with your crew. The last is to be grateful. I think a lot of people tend to forget that — during the good times, because they’re busy, during the bad times, we tend to forget the good times. Be grateful for the blessings.”