'Saving Sally' is a bittersweet love story dipped in a glaze of sci-fi and fantasy–and a film that is a 12-year journey of patience, hard work, and passion. If you're looking for a reason to head to the cinema to watch this MMFF entry, here are five.
1. Saving Sally is about love in the time of youth, the dreaded friendzone… and also about monsters and robots and evil boyfriends.
In this film, you'll meet Marty (played by Enzo Marcos), an aspiring comic-book artist secretly in love with his best friend Sally (played by Rhian Ramos), a gadget inventor. Like every love story, there are complications, and in this case, it's Sally's monster parents and her literal dick of a boyfriend. This story comes in live action and 2D animation — which is very seldom if not rare for a local film release, especially so in the case of MMFF entries!
2. It's got a lot for the many kinds of geeks out there.
This love story has many things going on, and even just from stills and the trailers, geeks already can get a lot from it. From its 2D animation, love for comic books and video games, to its duo of geeky leads (a comic book guy and a gadget girl!), there's already so much to get excited about. The trailer has even caught the attention of Neil Gaiman, who is a personal hero of the Saving Sally team and whose work serves as inspiration for Saving Sally.
3. Saving Sally is a whopping 12 year journey!
It was written in 2004, first shot in 2005, edited and animated 2006-2009, reshot from scratch in 2010, re-edited and re-animated from 2011 to 2015, and finally completed in 2016. From its beginnings as a short story, it is now a full-blown feature film. Whew! Working on an animated film may be easy for big budget productions, but it takes a lot of money for independent efforts like this film. Soon everyone can finally have a chance to experience all the hard work the team poured into their tiny little film with a lot of heart.
4. It made it to the Metro Manila Film Festival as one of the competing entries.
The many years of effort to have this film come to life was noticed by the Metro Manila Film Festival committee. And in their official statement, MMFF mentions more reasons why they picked Saving Sally as one of the 8 entries: "There is much going for this multi-genre film mounted by a small team of young animators who engaged in a ten-year effort to come up with an atypical youthful love story replete with child-like fantasy elements as applied through 2D animation."
5. Saving Sally received an A rating by the Cinema Evaluation Board.
The CEB is the team that reviews and grades the quality of local films before they open to the public in cinemas. They came, saw the film, and gave it an A — their highest rating which is pretty difficult to get!
Directed by Avid Liongoren, "Saving Sally" stars TJ Trinidad, Bodjie Pascua, Carmen Sanchez, Sharmaine Centenera Buencamino, and Archie Adamos. The film opens this Christmas in cinemas nationwide. To learn more about the film, visit savingsally.com, follow Saving Sally on Facebook and Instagram (@savingsallyfilm). #ImSavingSally
