PAMILYA ORDINARYO

Ordinary People

Directed by Eduardo Roy, Jr.

Discoveries / Philippines / 2016 / Drama / 107 mins / Tagalog with English subtitles / DCP / West Coast Premiere

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Watch Trailer

PAMILYA ORDINARYO

UltraStar Mission Valley
Friday, November 4, 2016 7:00 pm

PAMILYA ORDINARYO

UltraStar Mission Valley
Monday, November 7, 2016 8:55 pm

Description

Best Film, Best Director, Best Actress, 2016 Cinemalaya Independent Film Festival
Audience Award, Venice Days, 2016 Venice Film Festival
Official Selection, 2016 Chicago International Film Festival

Kids are getting side-swiped and cars are exploding in the streets of Manila. 17- and 16-year-old Aries and Jane do their parts to add to the urban nightmare, snatching phones from expats to feed their drug addictions and their month-old baby. Aries is the man of the block, bringing up a posse of underlings and building a home for his family on a sidewalk he guards with a teenage bark. But the mean streets have even meaner dogs, who they discover when Jane is conned out of their most precious possession, sending the young couple on a scramble to regain their foothold on life.

While director Eduardo Roy Jr. brings a dizzying intensity to the streets as he did with his previous documentary-esque features (Baby Factory, Quick Change), it’s his treatment of Aries and Jane’s above-ground obstacles that give PAMILYA ORDINARYO its strongest bite. There’s petty criminality and exploitation, and then there’s Roy’s cold portrayal of the police and media, vultures preying on the desperation of the most vulnerable. The critique relieves Roy from having to build up sentimentality for his two main characters, who are barely sympathetic as moral figures, but whose tired eyes, raspy wails, and dogged persistence make them too real to ignore. –Brian Hu

Co-presented by: Samahan Filipino American Performing Arts