WAITING FOR SUNSET

Best Picture, 2018 Cinemalaya Philippine Independent Film Festival
Audience Award for a fiction film, 2019 Vesoul International Film Festival of Asian Cinema

Upon their 27th anniversary as a couple, Celso reminds Teresa that he has now surpassed her previous long-term relationship of 26 years with Bene, with whom she had a child. Recognizing Celso’s competitiveness, or maybe it’s his insecurity, all Teresa can do is laugh. But when Teresa’s ex falls severely sick, she sets competition aside and brings Bene back into her life. To his credit, Celso is tenderly supportive. But the baggage of two relationships–the span of two adulthoods with overlapping grief–is hard to ignore, even in the sunsets of life.

The award-winning WAITING FOR SUNSET never succumbs to the histrionics of love triangles and ex-lovers, instead portraying how hearts and bodies are warmed by simply being around each other–sometimes as trios, sometimes as pairs. This is a love story about extending love, caring for children without your genes and sharing lifetimes of love to celebrate life itself. To pay tribute to the three, director Carlo Catu presents them in their casual courageousness, joking in bed or rekindling buried memories, small gestures that speak to an immenseness of devotion unmeasurable in anniversaries.  –Brian Hu