Judy Ann Santos, Jeanne Balibar and Stacy Martin are set to star in “Aid,” Philippines auteur Brillante Ma Mendoza’s new political drama, which is being introduced to international partners at the Cannes Film Market with Fire & Ice Media attached as delegate producer alongside France’s Ghost City Films and the Netherlands’ Human Films.
The project is also expected to be one of the first features produced under a bilateral co-production agreement signed by France and the Philippines in Cannes last year.
“Aid” follows a respected NGO worker committed to protecting Indigenous Aeta children in the Philippines who finds herself increasingly entangled in the broader machinery of international humanitarian aid. Santos plays Ruby Dela Cruz, the head of a grassroots organization serving Aeta communities, while Martin plays Angelique Dumont, a European humanitarian executive overseeing aid operations across Southeast Asia. Balibar, who has worked with Arnaud Desplechin, Mathieu Amalric, Olivier Assayas and Jacques Rivette, and also performs as a singer and stage actor, rounds out the principal cast.
Santos previously collaborated with Mendoza on “Mindanao” (2019), winning best actress at the Cairo Film Festival. Martin’s recent credits include Brady Corbet’s “The Brutalist,” Lars von Trier’s “Nymphomaniac” and Michel Hazanavicius’s “Godard Mon Amour.”
“I wanted to understand why, despite all the aid, so little truly changes. I realized that even good intentions can be swallowed by systems larger than the people trying to help. That unsettling truth is why I made ‘Aid,’” Mendoza said.
Mendoza will shoot the film on location at an Aeta village in Pampanga, his home region and a place whose dialect he speaks. Production is set to begin in October.
Liza Diño of Fire & Ice Media described the project as “a film that trusts its audience to sit with discomfort – to witness how care becomes complicity, and how the machinery of aid can outlast the people it was built to serve. This is cinema that doesn’t look away.”
Ghost City Films, headed by producer Franck Priot, is also behind “Zsazsa Zaturnah,” directed by Avid Liongoren, which is set to world-premiere at Annecy next month. “Do ends justify any means? This is the question raised by ‘Aid,’ and the strong yet very different backgrounds of our actresses will help Brillante’s story resonate in a universal way,” Priot said.
“For Human Films, ‘Aid’ represents exactly the kind of bridge we set out to build — between European and Asian storytelling traditions, between arthouse ambition and urgent contemporary relevance. Co-productions like this don’t just cross borders; they reshape how we see them,” said Pavel Feldman of Human Films.
Mendoza is among the Philippines’ most internationally recognized filmmakers, with work premiering and receiving awards at Cannes, Venice, Berlin and Locarno.
Source: variety.com
