Since his debut feature “Sleepless” became the sleeper hit of 2015 and won Best Actor for Dominic Roco and the NETPAC award for Best Picture, director Prime Crisologo Cruz has become one of the most promising young voices in Philippine cinema.
His 2016 follow-up, “Ang Manananggal sa Unit 23B,” headlined by Ryza Cenon, won Best Director and Best Supporting Actress for Vangie Labalan, proving that his rapport with audiences was no fluke.
The accolades also kept coming when a short film he co-directed with Galileo Te, “Kung ang Ulan ay Gawa sa Tsokolate,” won Best Short Film in the Cine Filipino film festival the same year.
Not surprisingly, a lot of doors have since opened for Cruz, who started his career in 2010 as a segment producer for “Pinoy Big Brother Teen Edition.” One of the creative minds of The Idea First Company of filmmakers Jun Robles Lana and Perci Intalan, Cruz looks like he just won the triple crown with high-profile projects for the country’s top movie studios.
For Star Cinema, he is helming the romantic comedy “Can We Still Be Friends?” starring Gerald Anderson and Arci Muñoz. He is developing a horror movie for Regal Films called “The Debutantes,” and he is scheduled to start working on another film project for Viva Films.
And Cruz has also finished “The Complex,” an atmospheric web-only horror series for D5Studio.
But even with the impending mainstream success, Cruz is quick to declare that he will remain true to his vision and will not cut corners and make compromises even when the situation calls for it. “I will still follow my heart,” he declared.
Producer-director Perci Intalan recalled that Prime and his girlfriend and frequent collaborator Jen Chuansu were both participants of their annual Cine Panulat Screenwriting Workshop. Intalan said it was Lana who saw Cruz’s potential to be a fine filmmaker.
“He and many others in the workshop just needed to be pushed and be given an opportunity to work on their own projects. So when we got ‘Paranormal Activity’ and ‘LolaBasyang.com’ for TV5, we used those vehicles to further develop their creativity,” Intalan told InterAksyon.
Those familiar with Cruz’s works will notice that they seem to have a recurring nocturnal theme, something the director shrugs off as just mere coincidental. He also seems to be partial to two genres: horror and romance and sometimes deftly combines them when given the chance.
In “Sleepless” — which returns to cinemas this week as part of the Film Development Council of the Philippines and SM Cinema’s Cine Lokal initiative — two call center agents are brought together by their insomnia and spend most of their early morning waking hours doing everything from skateboarding, hanging out at rooftops and the nearest convenience store.
They also wonder what other people are talking about and what they would do in case of a zombie apocalypse.
Starring Glaiza de Castro and Dominic Roco, “Sleepless” opens this Friday, May 26 at SM Cinemas in Mall of Asia, Megamall, North EDSA, Fairview, South Mall, Bacoor, Iloilo and Cebu.