Trailer Watch: Sheila Francisco Is a Screenwriter in a Coma in Martika Ramirez Escobar’s “Leonor Will By no means Die”

“Do you assume Ma will get up if we make her film?” the son of a retired cinema legend, now comatose, asks within the latest trailer for Martika Ramirez Escobar’s “Leonor Will By no means Die. The household drama made its world premiere at this yr’s Sundance Movie Pageant.

Escobar’s debut characteristic tells the story of Leonor Reyes (Sheila Francisco), a pillar of the Filipino motion movie business throughout the ‘80s who’s presently coping with the ravages of outdated age and grieving the premature loss of life of her son. She is transported – fairly actually – into the world of fiction when she takes out a forgotten screenplay she penned years in the past. 

Whereas engaged on the script, she is struck on the pinnacle by a falling TV set and knocked right into a coma. “As she lays unconscious within the hospital, fantasy and actuality start to blur” and he or she finds herself “awake inside her script, turning into the hero of her personal story,” the movie’s synopsis teases. 

Escobar advised us that “Leonor Will By no means Die,” isn’t only a charming story of a former filmmaker spending her ultimate days inside her personal screenplay. “It’s additionally about how I see life as one lengthy movie that we carry on writing and revising till it’s full,” she defined. 

In writing and directing “Leonor Will By no means Die,” Escobar additionally fills a dearth within the Filipino movie canon: “The concept that out of the a whole lot of Filipino motion movies within the Philippines all through historical past, none of them have been about an motion grandma,” she mirrored. “It’s effectively referred to as a macho style, however I feel it’s one thing particular to see it via the tender eyes of a girl.”

This reconstruction of a historically male-dominated style was what additionally attracted Francisco to the character of Leonor, additionally her first lead movie position. “I used to be very interested in the entire concept of a feminine screenwriter for motion movies,” she’s revealed. “I assumed that was very uncommon, particularly within the ‘80s, when male writers dominated that style.” Francisco added, “And my director Martika is a younger bubbly feminine millennial. The mix was simply too tempting to not bounce in.”

Amongst Escobar’s latest initiatives is “Dwelling Issues,” a 2020 brief movie a couple of lady who finds her companion has become a cardboard cutout of himself, and “Quadrilaterals,” a 2017 doc brief that follows a household of Abroad Filipino Staff in Manila.

“Leonor Will By no means Die” opens November 25 at NYC’s Metrograph and can present at LA’s Laemmle Royal and Laemmle Glendale December 2. A nationwide launch is to observe.