MA' ROSA
A film by Brillante Mendoza
110 minutes, color, 2016, Filipino w/ English subtitles
Actress Jaclyn Jose took home the award for Best Actress at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival for her powerful performance as Rosa in Ma’ Rosa, the riveting new film from director Brillante Mendoza.
Exploring the widespread corruption and chaos of the Philippines in the Duterte era, the film follows Rosa and her husband Nestor, owners of a tiny convenience store who supplement their meager income by selling small amounts of “ice” (crystal meth). Eventually the couple gets caught and hauled away by police, who are more interested in collecting bribes than eradicating crime. With their parents locked away, it’s left to Rosa’s children to scrounge together the money to pay off the police and free their parents, by any means necessary.
"Mendoza portrays working class family relations with unpretentious warmth. Boasting a simple, coherent plot shot with real-time, handheld verismo, it’s a work of understated confidence." - VARIETY
"Bold and assured." - TIME OUT LONDON
"Electrifying...a deeply sympathetic portrait of a woman navigating the rules of her unfair world as best she can. The Philippines’ submission to the 2017 Oscars for Best Foreign Language Film, Ma’ Rosa is a wonder." - FLICK FILOSOPHER
"A pungent dose of social realism combined with steadily-building tension."- FILM-FORWARD
"In-your-face authenticity." - FILM THREAT
"Mendoza's casual pace lures you into a gripping melodrama set in the underbelly of Manila, where people scramble to survive. His empathy for his characters takes what might have been a mere genre film to a higher humanist level." - NOW TORONTO
"Ma’ Rosa is tough-as-nails, and leaves you with a heaviness and a pulsating sympathy that’s impossible to ignore. A tiny powerhouse of a film, its unforgettably urgent in how it presents the way of life on the streets of Manila. Jaclyn Jose and Julio Diaz give near-imperceptibly powerful performances." -THE PLAYLIST
On DVD December 12 | On iTunes November 28
