Metro Manila Film Festival
The Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF) is an annual film festival held in Metro Manila, Philippines, which starts on December 25 through the New Year and the first weekend of January. The Festival focuses on Filipino films, and foreign films aren't shown in theatres during the duration of the event (in a similar vein to Canadian content regulations), leading to major Hollywood productions released during the holiday season being delayed to January to give way to the festival, save for IMAX and 3D releases.
The annual event started in 1975, with Diligin Mo ng Hamog ang Uhaw na Lupa ("Water the Thirsty Earth with Dew") by Augusto Buenaventura as the inaugural best film award winner.
Another highlight of the festival is the parade of floats that are lavishly decorated after the films they represent, along with film stars from their respective entries present on the floats. On the awards night, a Best Float award is also announced along with the major acting awards.
A spin-off event entitled the Metro Manila Summer Film Festival was established in 2019 to encourage filmmakers to produce more films. As with the regular MMFF being held during Christmas season, the Summer Film Festival is set to start every Easter weekend, and entries will include films which were either rejected from the mainline Festival or did not make it in time.
As with most film festivals, the MMFF is no stranger to controversy either. Over the years the MMFF has been criticised by film scholars and directors alike for favouring mainstream entries which are rushed to sate "masa" families flocking to malls during Christmas and lack artistic merit or meaningful content. To the likes of Vic Sotto and Vice Ganda, it didn't matter to them as long as, to quote Sotto, "it was a record-breaking festival"; this led a film council to come up with the Festival of Filipino Films (Pista ng Pelikulang Pilipino) as a Take That to what was perceived as the MMFF's degeneration to commercialised content and sappy romcoms as opposed to films worthy of taking pride on in the world stage. As director Joel Lamangan lamented during the 2018 edition of the film festival, “Sana naman, huwag lang komersyo ang kanilang isipin. Irespeto rin sana ng mga sinehan ang sining at industriya.” (“I hope they shouldn't just think about the commercial aspect; they should respect artistry and the film industry as well.”)[1]
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, cinemas have either been closed or scaled down their operations to comply with health protocols. Consequently, the 2020 edition of the Summer Film Festival was shelved and the regular edition was instead held as an online event, with all entries streamed via video-on-demand instead of a traditional theatrical release.