"Lanaya" is indeed a hybrid of local color and the diaspora.
Look, the film's director, Clyde Capistrano is a native of San Pablo City in Laguna province but he lives in Canada.
Being a Filipino, Clyde has been residing abroad but he wants to share his thoughts and feelings as a Fil-Canadian to his movie audience.
And Capistrano really goes out of his way to realize his dream by leaving Canada for a moment and shoots the film in his roots in San Pablo City.
Imagine spending such airfare and film producing budget just to situate his project in the authentic setting of the film's narrative.
He could have just thought of a story situated in his immediate environment in Canada and shot the whole production there on a lesser cost but according to one of his staff, Clyde wanted a Filipino material shot in the Philippines.
The result is "Lanata," a story of a detective who enlists a working medical professional to find out if an old woman indeed killed her husband.
San Pablo City is the setting of the story and all the members of his cast went to the southern city from Manila.
Madeleine Nicolas, Shaun Salvador, Rolando Inocencio and Jun Nayra travelled all the way from the various parts of the big city to San Pablo to shoot the film.
It was an enjoyable experience for the cast, the creatives and the technical people to have a taste of what San Pablo could offer.
Madeleine took a tricycle from the place she stayed in to the set.
According to Nicolas, the three of them, Rolando and Shaun are theater people but Jun has also enough acting and creative experiences and credentials in multimedia tasks.
"Lanaya" won the Best Feature Film at the 2025 Saskatchewan Film Festival in Canada.
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