Multi-Award Winning Imbisibol Cast and Crew Join PMNTV For TIFF Interview

By Michelle Chermaine Ramos
Photo credit Michelle Chermaine Ramos and Ariel Ramos
Toronto-Canada
September 17, 2015



After a remarkable victory bagging all the awards at the Sinag Maynila Festival this year including Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Cinematography, and Best Production Design, Lawrence Fajardo’s Imbisibol (Invisible) premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 14, 2015 at the Scotiabank Theatre in downtown Toronto. Days prior at a private cocktail party, the Imbisibol cast and crew chatted with PMNTV in an exclusive interview on the making of the movie and why the story is so close to their hearts.


Aptly titled Imbisibol, the movie tackles the individual emotional and physical hardships of undocumented OFWs (Overseas Filipino Workers) in Fukuoka, Japan, trying to remain unseen due to their illegal status. Produced by Brillante Mendoza, Wilson Tieng and Krisma Fajardo, the film is based on a one-act play written by Herlyn Gail Alegre for the Virgin Labfest and was eventually expanded into a full-length screenplay in collaboration with screenwriter John Bedia and director Lawrence Fajardo.

The story is set around Christmastime in the 1990s in Fukuoka, Japan and stars seasoned thespian Bernardo Bernardo, Ces Quesada who won the Best Actress award at Sinag Maynila, Allen Dizon who won the Best Actor award, Ricky Davao, JM De Guzman, JC Santos and Onyl Torres. “The 1990s was the decade in which the Japanese government decided to start evicting the Filipinos out of Japan because the majority of them were illegal workers,” explained screenplay writer John Bedia. So what makes Imbisibol different from other OFW themed movies? Unlike previous popular films about the OFW life, which leaned towards comedy or romantic drama, Imbisibol does not shy away from exposing the dark gritty truth of what many OFWs face every day. However, despite dealing with mature subject matter such as Allen Dizon’s character Manuel’s desperate situation as a male sex worker, Fajardo directs the scenes with such subtlety and finesse by telling the story without resorting to nudity, making the film safe for kids to watch.

Fajardo and his team decided from the get-go that if they were going to do a movie on the lives of illegal aliens, they were going to make it as authentic as possible. Production Manager Kimmy Maclang and John Bedia sought out and interviewed real illegal Filipino workers during their extensive research for the development of the script in their efforts to make the movie as realistic as possible. So how did they gain the illegal OFWs’ trust? “Sometimes I don’t think we ever did,” Maclang says. “They were scared and thought we were from the government.” 

Fajardo and his team had to endure the challenges of long shooting days to complete the entire film in Japan in only fourteen days in the bitter cold winter. “We started at 8 or 9am and we’d finish at 1am. My AD was Japanese as well as the camera and lighting crew so we had to adjust because they weren’t used to the “Filipino way” of filmmaking,” Fajardo chuckled as he explained how their Japanese crew were culture shocked by the extended shooting times. “

Bernardo related to the Imbisibol characters as he spoke of his personal experience as an OFW in the US before his comeback in the Philippines and explained why he was so emotionally invested in the project. “This is still happening, the plight of overseas contract workers who uproot themselves from their Filipino lives, separate themselves from their families, in order to give their children a better life, a better chance to survive and succeed and get educated.” he says. “ And I want the relatives that are  left back home who don’t know what’s happening, who just spend the remittances not thinking that maybe their relatives are just picking up the money from the floor or off trees…that there are a lot of sacrifices involved. “ The film is a tribute to the OFW or “Bagong Bayani” as Bernardo calls them in reference to how their hard-earned remittances are helping keep the Philippine economy afloat.

Krisma shared a message for the children of OFWs back home. “For the kids out there, don’t take their (OFW’s) hard work for granted because most people think it’s so easy and that just because you’re in another country, it’s exciting and fun and something new. But I’m sure if you ask them (the OFWs), they would rather just be in the Philippines taking care of their families if they could.”

The first public screening had the audience in shock as the story came to its emotional climax and ended with a lively Q&A session and meeting with the cast and crew. For many moviegoers, the story hit close to home as almost everyone is or has a relative or friend who is an OFW.

So what’s next for the Imbisibol team? Imbisibol will also be playing at the Focus on Asia Fukuoka Film Festival in Japan on September 20 at 9:45am, September 23 at 7pm and September 25 at 2pm. It will also be premiering at the Silk Road International Film Festival on September 23 in Fuzhou, China. With their growing fan base and upcoming screenings and films under development, the one thing that is for sure is this unstoppable team will be anything but invisible.

Watch the full interview on PMNTV at www.pmntv.ca and for more information on the movie and upcoming screenings, follow the Imbisibol Movie fanpage on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/IMBISIBOLtheMovie