Brillante Mendoza has done it again. His film, Alpha, The Right to Kill, won the Special Jury Prize in the San Sebastian International Film Festival in Spain.
Alpha, The Right to Kill is set in the Philippine government’s war on drugs.
The film competed against Felix Van Groeningen’s Beautiful Boy, Louis Garrel’s A Faithful Man, and Peter Strickland’s In Fabric.
Mendoza is an award-winning director whose films Serbis, Kinatay, and Taklub were screened in various editions of the Cannes Film Festival. Serbis and Kinatay were nominated for the Palme d’Or, the festival’s highest distinction. Kinatay didn’t win the Palme d’Or, but it won the Best Director Award for Mendoza. Ma’ Rosa, which tells the story of husband and wife Nestor and Rosa who use a sari-sari store as a cover-up for a drug business, won Jaclyn Jose the Best Actress Award in 2016.
Besides the Cannes, Mendoza’ work was nominated in the past for the Golden Lion in the Venice Film Festival and the Golden Bear in the Berlin Film Festival.
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