Fire & Ice Media Picks Up Filipino Billiards Drama ‘Bilyarista’ 

EXCLUSIVE: Fire & Ice Media has acquired international sales rights across all territories to Bilyarista, directed by Italian-American filmmaker Phil Giordano and starring Loisa Andalio and Venice Best Actor winner John Arcilla.

Andalio plays Aya, a young woman from Manila’s margins who sets her sights on becoming a world billiards champion – only to be pulled into a dangerous gambling circuit by her hustler uncle, played by John Arcilla. 

Arcilla became the first Filipino and Southeast Asian actor to win the Volpi Cup for Best Actor at Venice Film Festival for his role in Erik Matti’s On The Job: The Missing 8 (2021), an award that strengthened his international profile.

Fire & Ice Media said it is positioning Bilyarista as a commercially legible sports drama with strong crossover potential, describing it as “a female underdog story set in the Philippines’ storied billiards culture, a world that has produced some of the sport’s most celebrated global champions, with the emotional architecture of a survival thriller”. 

The company, which develops and represents Filipino and Asian content for international buyers, is targeting distributors and platform programmers looking for Asian titles with distinctive local identity and accessible genre appeal.

“Bilyarista has the combination buyers are looking for – a star on the rise, a world-class supporting actor, and a setting that is completely specific but immediately understood,” said Liza Diño, CEO of Fire & Ice Media. 

“The Philippines has a real billiards legacy on the international stage. This film lives inside that world and uses it to tell a story about talent, exploitation, and what it costs to be discovered by the wrong people. That travels.”

Rising actress Andalio previously starred in Mikhail Red’s esports drama Friendly Fire, which premiered at Hawai’i International Film Festival. Bilyarista marks a significant escalation for the actress, moving from a digital sports setting to a physically and psychologically demanding lead role built around a real athletic discipline.

For Giordano, the film deepens a creative partnership with Arcilla that began with short film Supot, which won a Hollywood Foreign Press Association Award, premiered at the Busan International Film Festival, and went on to screen at multiple Oscar-qualifying festivals. 

A graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and recipient of the Wasserman Award, Giordano developed Bilyarista through extended research into the Philippines’ professional billiards world. “Itoy represents every system that keeps extraordinary talent from reaching the top. That’s a story with no border,” Giordano said

Fire & Ice Media’s Cannes slate also includes Nigel Santos’ romantic drama Open Endings, about four queer women who are exes turned best friends, and recent catalogue titles Crosspoint and The Hearing.