'Mumbai Love' director hopes film urges Pinoys to be more open-minded on various cultures

MANILA, Philippines – A “modern day love story” is how director Benito Bautista describes his film “Mumbai Love.”

With the youth today being engrossed in technology and are more adventurous, they go to different places and take the roads less traveled.

And with this reality, Bautista believes that “Younger generation will travel, when you travel you end up falling in love, and when you fall in love the person might fall in love with you.”

Playing with this idea, the film “Mumbai Love” became a perfect piece for him delving on the concept where, “You can fall in love, but what if right in the middle is tradition and that tradition will stop you, what will you do? How are you going to tell your family? Are you really going to do it or not?”

The story of two different cultures falling in love is nothing different in the movie scene. Yet what makes this different is the fact that Filipinos, in one way or another, are influenced with Indian culture.

But despite this fact, Pinoys have “prejudice” when it come to people from other cultures, which is another fact that Bautista emphasized and wanted to change through this film.

 â€œKasama dito ang isang culture at society, and community that we’ve overlooked — our co-existence with the Indian community,” he said. “We conceive the ideas of who they are, we conceive the ideas of the things they do.”

So as the viewers leave the theater, aside from the twist in the film’s love story, Bautista hopes that “somehow, kahit a little bit, matulungan ko kayo na [mawala ‘yong prejudice]. it’s a modern day, we’re using digital equipment. Modern na tayo, so dapat modern na mag-isip.”

“Mumbai Love,” which stars Solenn Heussaff and Kiko Matos, will be in cinemas on January 22.