A punk anthem from the Philippines just got its ticket to the world. “Ria,” Arvin Belarmino’s folk-punk debut feature, has been picked up by international sales company Lights On following its world premiere at the Busan International Film Festival, where it took home the Heart of Eurasia Award.
The film, which bowed in Busan’s Vision-Asia section, follows a young folk-punk musician who teams up with her foster mother and fellow punks to take on a merciless property developer intent on tearing down their home — the last structure left standing in a neighborhood already reduced to rubble.
Nour Hooshmand as Ria (Credits: Lights On)
A Debut With Real Rebellious Energy
“Ria” stars Nour Hooshmand as the title character, an orphaned folk-punk artist living in Tarima, a tight-knit Manila punk commune facing demolition and systemic corruption. Sylvia Sanchez plays Olga, the diabetic matriarch at the community’s center — and to fund her medical treatments, Ria balances her music with a job as a hotel housekeeper.
The film is a five-country co-production spanning the Philippines, the Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Japan and Norway, and Belarmino drew on a strong short-film pedigree: his previous work includes Cannes selections and “Agapito,” the Cannes-debuting short he co-directed with Kyla Romero.
Lights On Bets on Resistance
Lights On co-founder Flavio Armone called the film “an ode to rebellion and a fierce cry against injustice,” praising cinema’s ability to “resist, question, and confront the world around us.” The acquisition extends the company’s relationship with Belarmino, whose journey from short films to this feature they have watched firsthand.
Belarmino himself described the story as speaking to “anyone who has lost someone to a broken system, anyone who refuses to be silenced, and anyone who believes in the power of resistance.” With international sales now in motion, this raw debut could be one of the breakout festival stories to watch through awards season.
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Source: Variety — read the full story there.
