Cinematic Ripples of Indie Film John Denver Trending Reach Europe, Wins 3 Major Awards in France
Being hailed as 2019 Cinemalaya Film Festival’s best full-length film was definitely just the start for John Denver Trending‘s voyage on the film acclamation scene.
Its winning stint at the 26th Festival International des Cinemas d’Asie de Vesoul in France was an attestation to this domination, where it took home three out of the nine major awards namely Audience Award, Special Jury Award, and Critic Award.
John Denver Trending is Antique-born director Arden Rod Condez‘s debut film, whose plot epicenter lies in the dark abyss of being the talk of the online town that is social media.
This particularly follows the story of how a 14-year old student named John Denver deals with an overturned life after being caught in the wicked and paralyzing virtual hands of people on the internet due to his viral assault video.
According to Arden, upon his personal accounts of the aftereffects of being famous online in the lives of Filipino millennials, he was awashed by the bugging question, how does someone come of age in the time of social media?
John Denver Trending was graced by mostly non-professional actors, who spoke Antique’s very own language Kinaray-a.
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A total of nine Asian films participated at the 26th Festival International des Cinemas d’Asie de Vesoul or Vesoul International Film Festival of Asian Cinema, which has been running since 1995—untiringly shining a light on Asian films.
Among these, John Denver Trending duly received the following awards:
• Audience Award – voted by the Vesoul community
• Special Jury Award – voted by a Tibetan director, a Busan International Film Festival director, a Paris-based producer, a Filipino producer, and a film historian
• Critic Award – voted by Paris-based English film critic, a Chinese journalist, and a Paris-based Chinese critic
Apart from these awards (among its many more others), John Denver Trending has also been lauded as the Best Project at the 2018 Hanoi International Film Festival Project Market in Vietnam, and its original script won second place at the Screenplay Category of the 68th Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature.
To date, John Denver Trending has no fixed screening apart from the select ones in different parts of the country. But you may keep an eye out on their Facebook page to know where else the acclaimed film will be screened.
Source: John Denver Trending’s Facebook page
Images courtesy of Cinemalaya Philippine Independent Film Festival’s website
