Julius Sotomayor Cena’s “Mga Dayo” is one of the 10 finalists in the 2012 Cinemalaya Independent Film Festival and Competition’s New Breed Full Length Feature Category to be held at the Cultural Center of the Philippines with showing at Greenbelt 3 and Trinoma from July 20 to 29, 2012. The 25 film-entries in this year’s were presented to the media during the press conference held at the CCP on June 28.
Mga Dayo (Resident Aliens)
Stars: Sue Prado, Janela Carera, Olga Natividad
Writer-Director: Julius Sotomayor Cena
Mga Dayo (Resident Aliens) is the first Cinemalaya entry to be shot entirely out of the Philippines. In this film, a photographer named Alex (Sue Prado) is getting into a fixed marriage to obtain a permanent resident card while a journalist named Miriam (Janela Carera) is waiting for her green card. Another major character, a housekeeper named Ella (Olga Natividad), is torn between keeping her 88-year-old mother’s residency on Guam or sending her back home to the Philippines.
Set against a classic migration story of Thanksgiving, Mga Dayo hopes to represent a few of millions of Filipino immigrant experiences in America.
SYNOPSIS Guam, U.S.A. Thursday, November 24, Thanksgiving Day. Alex, a local newspaper photographer, gets into a “green card marriage” with her good friend James, a Guam-born Filipino. Miriam, a former member of the Philippine press and now an established Guam journalist, longs to repair a damaged relationship with her American husband. Ella, a hotelhousekeeper for almost 20 years, finds means of sending her 88-year old mother to the Philippines with the uncertainty of coming back. As the island of Guam celebrates this classic American holiday when people count their blessings and give thanks, the lives of the three Filipina immigrants intersect and find themselves at a tug-o-war of sacrifice and significance where they must find their home or must they find it somewhere else.
According to writer-director Julius Sotomayor Cena, all three stories are based on real events but the characters are fictional. He points out that the common thread that ties the three characters together is their green cards and their migration issues.
The scenes were mostly shot at Bayview and Oceanview Hotel in Tumon, Guam.