Arvin Belarmino
Director
Kristine De Leon
Producer
Philippines
Country
Logline
With a chronically-ill foster mother and their community in peril, an orphaned folk-punk musician meddles in the illegal porn industry to make ends meet.
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Arvin Belarmino
Arvin Belarmino is a Filipino filmmaker who was raised both in provincial Cavite and the urban capital of Manila. Arvin directed several experimental and narrative short films that garnered critical acclaim both on the local and international stage. He was selected for the 2022 Festival De Cannes Cine fondation La Residence for his first feature project, Ria and won the Centre National du Cinema (CNC) award. Arvin is an alumnus of Talents Tokyo, Locarno Filmmakers Academy, Produire Au Sud Workshop Nantes and La Fabrique CInema 2023.
Kristine De Leon
Kristine DE LEON is a Filipina producer who started her career in the industry as an Operations Officer at the Film Development Council of the Philippines (FDCP), the country’s premier government agency for film. She helped pioneer and manage its international co-production funds before finally deciding to start producing her own films.
She currently serves as the lead producer of Arvin Belarmino’s first feature Ria, about a Filipina punk musician who enters the illegal porn industry to make ends meet for herself and her surrogate family – developed at the 2022 Festival de Cannes La Résidence, awarded the National Centre for Cinema and Animation (CNC) Pitch Award, and developed further at Produire au Sud and La Fabrique Cinéma de l’Institut français. She is also one of the producers for Arjanmar H. Rebeta’s Dancing of the Pigeons, about a mother’s search for the truth behind her husband’s disappearance in their rural town (FDCP CreatePH Small Budget Fund Award) and Isabel Sandoval’s next feature, Underworld, about a female police detective who battles a corrupt system set in Martial Law era.
She is also an associate producer of Sze-Wei Chan’s Tens Across the Borders, which traces the journeys of three Southeast Asian dancers as they walk their way towards self-acceptance (Cannes Docs, DMZ Development Fund, Busan’s Asian Documentary Fund, and Purin Pictures.)
De Leon is an alumna of Miriam College, where she graduated with degrees in Communication and Digital Media Production, and of the Produire au Sud Workshop in Nantes, France, where she studied the foundations of international co-productions and sales. In addition to this, she was selected as a fellow at the 2023 International Film Business Academy (IFBA) Program of the Busan Asian Film School.
Kristine embraces her newfound role as a mother, cherishing her daughter as the most exquisite masterpiece of her life.