Ned's Project, the Filipino film directed by Lem Lorca, is included in the official selection of the 17th Asiatica Film Mediale.
The film festival is currently happening at Teatro India and Teatro Argentina in Rome, Italy until October 2.
In an e-mail exchange with PEP.ph (Philippine Entertainment Portal), lead actress Angeli Bayani expressed her excitement in representing the country in the said film festival.
She wrote, "Since 2000, the Asiatica Film Mediale has been a very good venue for Asian cinema to be represented, and it continues to strengthen communication and understanding between Italy and Asia. For Ned's Project to be part of such an important festival, is an honor in itself, more so that it is the lone Philippine entry."
Ned's Project revolves around a lesbian tattoo artist named Ned and her journey and obsession to fulfill her life's biggest dream which is to have her own baby.
The film will be competing with other Asian films including Abbas Amini's Valderamma (Iran), Chang Tso-chi's Thanato's Drunk (Taiwan), Chang Jiang Tu's Crosscurrent (China), Bar Kaya and Soner Caner's Rauf (Turkey), Emir Baigazin's The Wounded Angel (Kazakhstan), Akihiko Shiota's Wet Woman in Wind (Japan), E J-Yong's Bacchus Lady (South Korea), K. Rajagopal's A Yellow Bird (Singapore), Zhou Yupeng's Mother's Airfield (Mongolia), and Elite Zexter's Sand Storm (Israel).
Angeli admitted that she initially felt the character wasn't suited for her. Ultimately, she agreed to do the film as her way to veer away from her comfort zone.
She recalled, "I agreed to do it after having thought it over for some time, mainly because I have not done something like this before. I appreciated the fact that both our director and writer thought that I could do it, and so I decided to rise to the challenge.
"As an actor, one must always find opportunities to get out of one's comfort zone, and I figured I had much to learn from playing Ned."
The award-winning actress considers this as one of her most daring roles. In the film, Angeli shot love scenes with Max Eigenmann and Dionne Monsanto.
Angeli also admitted to having insecurities before making the film which she eventually learned to embrace.
The theater/indie film actress explained, "An actor will always be insecure about many things. In my case, I had to deal with the fact that I did not consider myself physically attractive enough for the part. I reminded myself that Ned was Ned not because of her physical beauty but because of her heart.
"I decided to use my own physical imperfections instead of thinking of them as a hindrance to my portrayal. When you think about telling her story with utmost sincerity, things like unwanted bulges which a woman would normally want to hide, become unimportant.
She continued, "I instead embraced it and made it an integral part of the character. Everything else that did not help in telling her story was cast aside."
Last March, Angeli was hailed as Best Actress at the 2016 CineFilipino Film Festival for her portrayal of a lesbian character. Max Eigenmann also bagged the Best Supporting Actress award. The film also won the awards for Best Picture, Best Cinematography, Best Screenplay, and Best Production Design.
When asked how she felt when Ned's Project received positive reviews from different film critics, Angeli answered, "I was very happy for everyone involved in the film. I was happy for the writer, John Bedia, our director, Lem Lorca, but I was especially happy for the person who was the inspiration for Ned's Project."
Angeli hopes she was able to do justice to her role. She wrote, "More than anything, I was focused on telling her story in the hope that it would resonate with other people. I wanted this to be a film that the LGBT community would be proud of. I hope I was able to do that."
Watch the film's full trailer below: