• Japan Premiere

Spotlight

Whether the Weather is Fine

Kun maupay man it panahon

Director: Carlo Francisco MANATAD

2021｜Philippines, France, Singapore, Indonesia, Germany, Qatar｜104min｜Language: Waray-Waray｜Subtitles: English, Japanese

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Starring

Daniel PADILLA
Rans RIFOL
Charo SANTOS

Synopsis

Miguel (Daniel PADILLA), his mother Norma (Charo SANTOS) and his beloved Andrea (Rans RIFOL) venture out into the ruins of the coastal city of Tacloban after it has been hit by Typhoon Haiyan. As they wander around the disaster zone, they find order has collapsed as packs of animals, religious fanatics, and children run loose amidst a deteriorating environment. Their goal should be to get on an evacuation ship to Manila but they soon get caught up in painful personal quests and religious mania…

Drawing from the real-life devastation of his hometown wrought by a supertyphoon, director MANATAD crafts an ecological satire/drama that skews away from disaster movie cliches to create a hauntingly melancholy experience that highlights the absurdity that can be found in the aftermath of natural disasters.

[Jason MAHER]

Director's Message

On the 8th of November 2013, the strongest tropical cyclone ever recorded made landfall in Eastern Philippines, destroying most of my hometown, Tacloban.

My city's horrendous loss collided with terrible personal demons, and I decided to make a film set during the aftermath of the typhoon. The film unfolds like a dream-following the strange trajectory of my own life and my hometown's destruction through the story of a son, his mother, and their community. The plot is intentionally minimal to allow audiences to immerse themselves in the characters' consciousness and struggle for survival. After the senselessness of having lost so much to nature for no reason, the characters inescapably lose their own sense of justice. In the desperate struggle for survival, all sense of humanity and morality are eroded, and to save oneself, one must destroy another. No one can stay innocent.

Despite its absurd situations, the film by no means fantastical, and it is grounded in reality. The expression of absurdity and surreal touches - and the exodus of the people wanting to finally leave the hellhole - harkening back to Noah's Ark - are meant to create an alienating effect to evoke the sense of disorientation and disorder that the characters are experiencing. The film balances the strange relationship of man vs nature. Man destroys nature reacts.

Nature destroys man suffers, but during destruction nature nurtures man and vice versa.

The film also greatly examines how faith affects change, change that could, makes it possible to survive although it may be absurd, silly, theatrical or hysterical. This faith leads to a form of the characters transcendence., the drive for pure resilience and definitely everyone's will to survive.

Whether the Weather is Fine also gives a space and a voice to an underrepresented language in Filipino cinema, Waray-Waray This lack of representation reflects how both the Waray's cultural development and economic progress lags far behind national development. The film scrutinizes the local complexities of less developed urban areas like Tacloban, which are plagued by the troubles and immoralities of city life, yet entrenched in moralistic parochial systems of belief and superstition.

Whether the Weather is Fine expresses of an awareness and an incident that I feel is important to discuss during this generation we are in. The belief that through this film, the understanding of a devastation has not only changed a "community" but also humanity as a whole. Stripping them bare of everything they have - and finally defining the true essence of love, hoping dreams and survival.

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