Above the clouds in Tokyo
Where are you? Please come here now. Right now,” said the voice on the other end of the hotel room telephone. It was Japanese precision meets Filipino time, and I was about two minutes past our schedule.
I rushed to the lobby of the beautiful Hotel Okura and was met by a pair of young, smiling Japanese girls. They bowed. I bowed. They bowed. I bowed again. “So sorry, our English not so good,” the girls said. They proceeded to recite a set of instructions, which I didn’t quite understand, and before I knew it I was in a car rushing through the busy streets of Tokyo.
We got off at Roppongi Hills Mori Tower, the 54-story skyscraper with a commanding view of the entire city. The girls escorted me to a waiting room, which had macaroons, wine,and champagne, but before I could help myself, they told me it was time to move again. We went down an escalator, up an elevator, through the building’s garage, and past a series of maze-like corridors. And just when I had time to breathe, I was led outside of the building and it dawned on me, just where I was. I was at the top of the red carpet of the 27th Tokyo International Film Festival.
“The team of Above the Clouds from the Philippines!’ blared a speaker. As I looked around, I saw hundreds of flashing cameras, a parade of celebrities from Japan and across the world, hordes of screaming fans asking for autographs — and then, beside me, my producing partner Bianca Balbuena. Here we were, this small film from the Philippines, in the middle of all this madness.
Just a few hours before, Bianca and I were on a Philippine Airlines flight from Manila to Tokyo. (The flag carrier flies directly to the airports of Narita and Haneda, making “The Land of the Rising Sun” an affordable, comfortable, and quick ride away from “The Pearl of the Orient Sea”). Now, we were walking a red carpet, being shouted at by photographers, asked for autographs by random Japanese people, and stopped for TV interviews along the way. We felt a bit like Bill Murray in Lost In Translation: fantastically overwhelmed and extremely confused.
We were at the Tokyo International Film Festival because our film, Above the Clouds, had been selected to have its world premiere here. World premiere — after a five-year struggle in making the film, we would, finally, for the first time, share our baby with an audience and see it take its first steps. I can tell you, the whole experience was nerve-wracking.
Pleasant surprises
A few days after the red carpet, Bianca and I were joined for our debut screening by our cast, the talented 16-year-old actor Ruru Madrid and Pinoy rock legend Pepe Smith. They both came aboard PAL flights direct to Tokyo. This was Ruru’s very first time outside of the Philippines, and Pepe Smith’s first international film fest — and as the two were greeted by festival volunteers with the same bow-smile-barely-understandable-instructions routine that greeted me, I could tell they were having a Bill Murray moment as well.
Our screenings took place at state-of-the-art Toho Cinemas in the posh complex of Roppongi Hills, and they came with a series of pleasant surprises. The first surprise was that our screenings had sold out days before, with hundreds of people snapping up pricey tickets in advance. The second surprise was that while most of the audience was Japanese, a good number was Filipino: OFWs who came from across town and even skipped work. The third surprise was how the audience reacted to our film.
We were introduced to viewers by Kenji Shizaka, the programmer of the Asian Future section of the festival.. Shizaka had come to the Philippines during Cinemalaya, and we showed him a rough draft of the film. Even then, he told us how much he loved the movie, and though he could only pick one Filipino film to select for Asian Future, he invited us then and there.
“Can I call you the Mick Jagger of the Philippines?” Shizaka asked Pepe Smith in front of the waiting audience. “Yeah, because Mick is the Pepe Smith of England!” Pepe answered. We all laughed. It took some of the nerves away, but only for a moment. As the lights dimmed, and the film started to play, my heart started beating like a drum. I closed my eyes, put my hands on my face and slumped in my seat, and I stayed this way until I heard the friendly, familiar sound of laughter. The audience was actually laughing with the movie! As the story progressed, the laughter turned into sobbing, and I gathered the courage to turn around. I saw people’s faces as they gazed at the screen with tears running down their faces, and in this moment, this precious moment, I couldn’t help but tear up myself. This was magic. This was cinema. This is why we make movies.
The film cut to black and the credits rolled, and I heard the audience applaud. Now, Above the Clouds is a Filipino story. Set against the background of a natural disaster, it tells the story of two people who’ve felt they’ve lost everything but come to terms with their grief on a journey up a beautiful mountain. The film was a challenge to make, too. We shot over the span of a year on mountain peaks, raging rivers, caves, cliffs, forests, dead woods, grasslands, cities, and highways. We even had to recreate an evacuation center with 600 extras. All these thoughts and memories came rushing to my head as people clapped, and the feeling was beyond words.
Audience reaction
Most of the audience stayed in the theater to ask us questions. The first person to raise his hand was a German filmmaker who was shaking. I thought he was going to shout at us, but instead, he held back tears and thanked us for the movie. The Japanese viewers, having lived through natural disasters themselves, asked us about typhoons Ondoy and Yolanda. One Filipina said that after seeing the film, she feels compelled to come home.
A long line of people waited for us outside of the cinema. They all wanted photos with Pepe Smith and Ruru. A French photographer, who had discovered Pepe’s music through YouTube, tracked him down so he could take a photo of the rock legend saying, “Rackenroll!” Ruru, meanwhile, developed a huge following of giddy, giggling girls — and more importantly, the respect of actors such as Sharifah Amani, the queen of Malaysian independent cinema, and the muse of the late great Yasmin Ahmad. Sharifah gave Ruru a hug, and congratulated him for his performance, which she said possessed “such honesty.”
“I could not hold back my tears during (the film),” Sharifah later posted on Instagram. “Subhan’ Allah; truly breathtaking. Thank you, Above the Clouds for the wonderful feelings… for a beautiful film.”
The morning after, Bianca and I woke up to heartwarming posts on social media. A Japanese Instagram user named sheepinthesand posted on my page, saying, “I’d like to watch it again... As one who works in the filmmaking industry, I have to tell you this is one of the best films I ever watched! Thank you.” A Twitter user named Yui Takagi tweeted, “I saw Above the Clouds. It was a movie that remains in the very heart. My hometown, typhoons every year… I (will) not forget this movie.”
Bianca, Pepe, Ruru, and I came into Tokyo feeling lost in translation, but we ended our trip with our hearts above the clouds. We’ve made a Filipino film that we’re awfully proud of. Our journey isn’t done, though, and now, we’d like to share it with you. Next, we’re taking the film to the Singapore International Film Festival, where it will compete for the Silver Screen Awards. (We have a screening on Dec. 11 at The Projector, and I will be there for a Q&A.) We hope to screen it in the Philippines very soon.
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To follow our journey as we bring “Above the Clouds” around the world, visit us at http://www.abovetheclouds.ph. Special thanks to Philippine Airlines for their kind support in flying us to Tokyo.
