Filipino director shines in Berlin with hostage drama

By Andrew McCathie Feb 12, 2012, 15:12 GMT

Berlin - French actress Isabelle Huppert says she was confronted with 'the most extreme situations' in her professional career in Captive, an at times unscripted film by Filipino director Brillante Mendoza in which she stars as a hostage of Islamic radicals.

In the film, which premiered at the Berlin Film Festival on Sunday, Huppert plays a volunteer working in the Philippines, one of a group of people kidnapped from a beach resort in South East Asia.

'We were in very dangerous situations most of the time,' she said, recalling how the film was shot over several days at sea and included long stretches in the jungle surrounded by insects and wild animals.

'Basically we did not have the feeling that it was fiction but that it was everyday reality,' she said. 'We had to react to exhaustion and fear.'

The initial sheer terror of their kidnapping turns into a year-long nightmare, with Captive quickly becoming a war drama as the hostages find themselves caught up in the Filipino government's military campaign against Muslim separatists in the southern part of the country.

Mendoza's movie is inspired by real events that have taken place in the southern Philippines. To increase its dramatic effect, many of the actors were not provided with a script.

'Actually we never knew what was would happen when we started shooting. We were just plunged into this situation,' she said.

'You don't prepare for the such a film ... You capture the moment by putting the actors in situations that they would not normally be prepared for.'

For Mendoza, his film is essentially 'about humanity and perseverance.'

In Captive, Mendoza also draws out the tensions between Islam and Christianity as he seeks to explore the differences in the every spiritual life of the two religions.

In building up his story, Mendoza said he tried to hear the story from all sides, interviewing hostage victims, the military, the government and members of the Islamic groups.

Seen as part of a new wave of filmmakers from across South East Asia, Mendoza does not shy away from portraying the sometimes violence and grimness of modern life.

'As filmmakers we are responsible for what is happening around us,' Menodoza reporters in Berlin. 'There are a lot things that are happening around us and these are stories that have to be told.'

Captive is the 10th film that the 51-year-old director has made since 2005.

Since then, he has won international awards, including the best director prize at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival for his film Kinatay, which was about a violent gang of hit men.

His low-budget Serbis, which was set in a decaying Manila red light theatre, screened in Cannes' main competition in 2008. It was the first time that a film from the Philippines had been included in the race for the festival's top award, the Palme d'or, since 1984.

But Captive is Mendoza's most ambitious movie and is aimed for a wider audience.

'It's not my usual type of film,' he said. 'This is much bigger in scope and production.'