Honor Thy Father producers considering suit vs. MMFF

The producers behind “Honor Thy Father” is considering suing the Metro Manila Film Festival’s (MMFF) executive committee for damages over its decision to disqualify the movie from Best Picture race.

Reality Entertainment Inc. legal counsel Agnes Maranan told reporters Monday that the company is also mulling over filing of graft charges against the top officials of the film festival because of the controversy, which has gained traction on social media over the weekend.

“Right now we are exploring all options, including filing a case for damages and the option of this being a graft case because… undue prejudice was committed against this movie and the producers by public officials. For me, that falls within the scope of the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act,” she said in a press conference.

Maranan, however, said Reality Entertainment has yet to decide on which legal step to take since it is still gathering additional information about the matter.

“We’re still in the process of gathering more information. We are still in shock over the whole thing since we were only informed about the disqualification on Dec. 26. Because of that, we still have not found the time to gather all the information needed to put together the appropriate cases,” she said.

The MMFF’s decision to exclude “Honor Thy Father” from the Best Picture race became controversial because the film’s producers were only informed about it in a letter sent less than 24 hours before the Awards Night was held Sunday.

In the letter, Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) Chairman Emerson Carlos said the MMFF executive committee ruled to disqualify “Honor Thy Father” from the selection of the film festival’s Best Picture Category due to its producers’ failure to disclose the movie’s participation in the Cinema One Originals Festival 2015.

Carlos is the concurrent overall chairman of the MMFF.

In Reality Entertainment’s defense, “Honor Thy Father” producer Ronald Stephen Monteverde said they duly informed film festival officials as early as November that the film will be participating in the Cinema One Festival.

He said he complied with the MMFF executive committee’s request to submit a sworn statement by Cinema One head Ronald Arguelles attesting to the fact that “Honor Thy Father’s” screening in the festival did not generate revenues and would be shown by invitation only.

Maranan said that if the film festival officials were already convinced that the producers were at fault, they should have been informed of the disqualification weeks prior to the MMFF kicked off on December 25.

She also questioned the timing of the executive committee’s serving of the disqualification notice to Monteverde since it occurred after the jury voted on the films included in the festival.

“The juror voting on the festival definitely occurred before Dec. 25 because the awards night was scheduled on Dec. 27. We were disqualified after the juror voting. Siguro draw your own conclusions na lang doon sa timing,” Maranan said.

The lawyer urged the MMFF executive committee to disclose the minutes of the meeting where “Honor Thy Father’s” disqualification was formalized so the public would be better informed of the bases behind its decision.

“We’d like to know when they met and what took place in that meeting or in several meetings. Siguro naman dahil ito ay official meeting ng executive committee and [the MMFF] is a government body ay may minutes ‘yung meeting na ‘yun. We want to know paano sila nag-decide,” she said.

Based on her scrutiny of the MMFF’s rules, Maranan said what happened to “Honor Thy Father” appears to be a case of “semi-disqualification” since it was only disqualified from the Best Picture race but was allowed to compete in other categories.

“Kung talagang may na-violate kami, hindi ba dapat disqualified kami sa lahat [ng categories]? Parang naimbento ata itong semi-disqualification. ‘Yun ang nangyari sa amin eh. Ang pagkaka-disqualify sa amin sa iisang category lang just shows how arbitrary and subjective the MMFF executive committee’s decision was,” she said.

"Honor Thy Father" won a total of five awards in the MMFF, including Best Director for Erik Matti. —NB, GMA News