The ‘Ma’ Rosa’ team (from left) John Paul Duray, Maria Isabel Lopez, Jomari Angeles, Jaclyn Jose, Brillante Mendoza, Andi Eigenmann, Neil Ryan Sese and Ruby Ruiz AFP PHOTOS Not scaredMendoza said he hoped the film would have a strong impact abroad as well as at home.“The mere fact that I am doing this sort of film means I am doing my country a great service and this for me is enough. Showing this film in Cannes is also an eye-opener to a lot of Europeans and First World countries. Let us get out of our shell and don’t be deceived,” he added.Mendoza’s gritty, hard-hitting films have often rubbed the Filipino authorities up the wrong way, with censors trying to stop screenings of his award-winning 2009 film Kinatay.But he said police allowed him to shoot part of Ma’ Rosa inside a real station, and several officers appeared in the film alongside Jose and her real-life daughter Mercedes Cabral, who is also a huge star in the Asian country.But the 55-year-old director—who has made a dozen acclaimed features after only picking up the camera a decade ago—said he fully expects a hostile reaction from some officers.“I will deal with it when it happens,” he told AFP, but he said he “wasn’t going to lose sleep over it. If I am challenged I will ask them if they know of any similar situations. If they say, ‘No,’ I know they may be lying.”Jose and Cabral spent time living in a Manila slum to become “immersed” in their characters, Mendoza said, although Jose—who has been in several of his films—told the director that she came from an even tougher background.He still insisted, however, that she go and live in the area so she could remind herself how people spoke and moved.“I said to her, ‘Yeah, you came from this but it is good to be reminded of it, because you have made a lot of big movies since,’” he joked.AFP
