ML: Starring Eddie Garcia and Tony Labrusca showing on November 7 in cinemas!
Sunday, October 28, 2018
I had a privilege of watching a former Cinemalaya 2018 entry which is entitled "ML"when they had a Bloggers Exclusive Screening.
ML is a 2018 Philippine independent film written and directed by Benedict Mique Jr.The film opens in a classroom in an upscale school. Two students, Carlo (Tony Labrusca) and Jace (Renz Villaraiz) are arguing with their history teacher, who is teaching them about the evils of martial law. The professor gives them a project - they need to interview a person who has lived through martial law so they can have first-hand information about it.
Carlo is enthusiastic about the project and he wants to go big. He decides to interview Eddie Garcia who plays a retired METROCOM Colonel suffering from dementia, leading him to believe that he is still living in the days of the Marcos dictatorship.
Unfortunately, Carlo immediately realizes that this is a bad decision when he finds himself tied up and bloodied in the dark basement of the colonel’s mansion. He was captured and tortured just as what the Colonel did to activists back in the 1970s.
During the Cinemalaya 2018 Film Festival, only two movies tackle Martial Law, Kip Oebanda's Liway and Benedict Mique Jr.'s ML.
During the Bloggers Screening, some of the cast were present together with Direk Benedict Mique Jr. including Liane Valentino as Pat, Henz Villaraiz as Jace and Tony Labrusca
as Carlo.
ML is writted and directed by Direk Benedict Mique Jr. He shared some details on how the movie was conceptualized from the graphic demonstration of the torture.
The cast Liane Valentino, Henz Villaraiz and Tony Labrusca also shared their experience on shooting the film, from their understanding about Martial Law and how they executed some of the torture scenes in the film.
The film is very on point and bold enough to showcase what happened to those who might have experienced to what was like to be tortured during those dark times. The film was really graphic to the point of revolting and thought provoking as well.
Veteran actor Eddie Garcia definitely deserves to win the Best Actor award in the recent Cinemalaya 2018 for the movie ML. At the age of 89 years old, he definitely showed how bad-ass of a Colonel he is plus his shifting of mood, from mad and revolting as he torture the millennials to being happy and loving to his family.
ML opens in cinemas nationwide this November 7, 2018!
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