QCinema 2020 Opens With Black and White Version of Bong Joon-ho's "Parasite"

Parasite Black and White version QCinema 2020

A monochromatic version of Bong Joon-ho's Parasite is set to open this year's QCinema International Film Festival, festival director Ed Lejano announced during an online press event.

Joon-ho's Academy Award-winning film will join Fernande Valadez's Identifying Features and Raya Martin's Death of Nintendo as the only three titles to be screened theatrically, by-invitation at an outdoor venue in Quezon City. Parasite will be presented on the festival's opening night on November 27, and the latter two on November 28.

After the screening, QCinema will host the book launch of Philippine Cinema by Gaspar Vibal and Dennis Villegas and edited by Teddy Co.

With this, QCinema International Film Festival becomes the country's first hybrid festival with both physical and online screenings for its 2020 special edition, being dubbed as "A New Filmscape". It will take place from November 27 to December 5, 2020.

“Like many other film festivals around the world, we’ve had to adapt to the unprecedented challenges of 2020. Factoring in safety concerns and restrictions, we’ve decided to follow the global trend of staging a hybrid film festival,” says Ed Lejano, festival director.

The festival’s online screening will be released nationwide through UPSTREAM, the newly launched online Transactional Video on Demand (TVOD) streaming platform. Tickets may be purchased from GMovies.

Highlighting its online festival are four QCinema greats.

Rae Red's Babae at Baril

QCinema 2019, 2018, and 2017 best picture winners stage a comeback. These are Cleaners by Glenn Barit; Oda sa Wala by Dwein Baltazar; and Balangiga: Howling Wilderness by Khavn. The fourth is the big winner at the recent Urian award, Babae at Baril by Rae Red.

The program also includes special sections.

The Asian Special Edition includes Lav Diaz's Genus, Pan, which won the best director award in the 2020 Venice Film Festival, and Roh, the 2019 Malaysian Malay-language indie arthouse horror film by Emir Ezwan.

Lav Diaz's Genus, Pan

Two feature films will be shown under New Horizons, QCinema’s program that puts the spotlight on first and second-time filmmakers who are receiving accolades from the international film festival circuit.

Song Without a Name is a 2019 Peruvian drama film directed by Melina León. It was screened in the Directors' Fortnight section at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival. It is also the Peruvian entry for the Best International Feature Film at the 93rd Academy Awards.

Rom by Tran Thanh Huy, the first Vietnamese film to receive the New Current Awards at the 24th Busan International Film Festival, is also in the New Horizons section.

Films under QCinema’s much-lauded and much-anticipated sections are also in the line-up.

This year’s RainbowQC section includes End of the Century and Suksuk.

Lastly, the Screen International section features three films that earned widespread acclaim in different film festivals.

The first film is a Brazilian drama screened in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival, Divine Love by Gabriel Mascaro.

A 2020 Cannes Film Festival selection, True Mothers, a Japanese drama film by Naomi Kawase is also in QCinema’s Screen International. This is Japan’s entry at the 93rd Academy Awards.

The third, Corpus Christi is a Polish film by Mateusz Pacewicz, which premiered at the 2019 Venice Film Festival and is the Polish entry in the 92nd Academy Award.