At the rate we’ve been getting text messages that Brillante “Dante” Mendoza won this or that award in an international film festival, he’s probably the Filipino director with the most number of wins in these events held all over the world. Is anybody making a tally?

We have become almost blasé to hear that Dante has won in yet another film fest. The prolific filmmaker’s latest triumph is at the 6th Vladivostok International Film Festival of Asian Pacific Countries where he won the Best Director award while his lead, Gina Pareño, earned the Best Actress honors for “Serbis.” Dante’s victories are raising awareness in the international film community of the Philippines’ vibrant indie movie scene.

(Photo: One more addition to his growing trophy collection: a triumphant Brillante “Dante” Mendoza (center) in Vladivostok, Russia.)

It is almost too good to be true: a Filipina actress, Marife Necesito (see photo), has been plucked from relative obscurity to star in an international film with Michelle Williams and Gael Garcia Bernal. “Mammoth,” written and directed by Swedish wunderkind Lukas Moodysson, was shot in New York, Sweden, Thailand and the Philippines. With Marife in the photo at the film’s press conference in Sweden are Sophie Nyweide, Michelle Williams, director Lukas Moodysson and Gael Garcia Bernal.

Sounding humble in our interview via e-mail, Marife peppered every sentence with “po” — we felt like we were being addressed by Nora Aunor. For brevity’s sake, we deleted all the “pos” in Marife’s answers in our interview which appears in our column. Read her account of how she landed the role — it’s a fascinating story.

TORONTO, Canada –It was a moving sight — Anita Linda, at 83, attending her first ever international film festival, was applauded and cheered enthusiastically by the audience who came to the second screening of “Adela,” her movie directed by Adolfo Alix Jr. (left) and produced by Arleen Cuevas (right), at the ongoing Toronto International Film Festival. A “question and answer” with the audience followed the screening which reflected the crowd’s affection for Anita and her performance as a grandmother marking her 80th birthday. I was told that the first screening of “Adela” was also a success. (Photo by Ruben Nepales).

The Philippines’ “Melancholia” directed by Lav Diaz won the Orizzonti prize for feature film in the Venice Film Festival.

Last year, Diaz won the Special Mention in the Orizzonti for his documentary “Encantos.”Melancholia,” according to Diaz, is an 8 plus hour meditation on love, life and suffering. It was shot in various locations around the Philippine countryside.

MY good hunch about our two entries in the ongoing Venice Film Festival’s sidebar, Orizzonti, “Jay” and “Melancholia,” is proving to be right.

(Photo: “Jay” delegation on the Lido [from left]: distributor Ferdy Lapuz, actor-cinematographer Carlo Mendoza, lead actor Baron Geisler and writer-director-producer Francis Xavier E. Pasion)

Financial Times came out with the first review of director Francis Xavier E. Pasion’s “Jay” and it is very encouraging. The London paper’s critic, Nigel Andrews, cited Francis’ directorial debut which stars Baron Geisler, Coco Martin and Flor Salanga, as one of the standouts so far in the festival on the Lido.

Andrews wrote, “On the Venice fringe there have been two films to cheer: an Italian reconstruction and a Philippine satire. Pier Paolo Pasolini’s 1963 La Rabbia (‘Rage’) was a potion of screen rhetoric, never before seen in the undiluted form the director intended…Giuseppe Bertolucci (Bernardo’s brother) has re-assembled the old material, added some never seen, and puts before Italy and the world Pasolini’s true original rage, a scintillating montage of 20th-century news footage – from Mussolini to Marilyn Monroe – unified and signposted by a genius’s vision.

“Perfidious media managers; treachery in the name of truth. They are everywhere today, not least in the lies of ‘reality TV.’ Francis Xavier Pasion’s Jay, from the Philippines, is an acutely funny tale of intrusive telly reporters, bearing down on a family bereaved by a gay son’s murder to make their grief part of a nation’s infotainment. They start by poking a lens at the family’s faces as they learn the news; they end by getting them to act, or re-enact, every emotional convulsion that needs a second, third or umpteenth take. The remuneration? The reporters will help find the son’s killer. By the time they do, even the murderer, we know, will be signing release forms and hungrily securing his 15 minutes of fame.”

Congratulations to the “Jay” delegation now in Venice! Next, Lav Diaz unveils his “Melancholia” on Saturday. I have high hopes for Lav’s second consecutive Orizzonti (Horizons) entry too.