Vivamax welcomes young, new award-winning director
VIVA Films continues to give breaks to young and new filmmakers and the latest one is Christian Paolo Lat, a Pinoy filmmaker whose family migrated from San Pedro, Laguna to Ottawa, Canada when he was in his early teens.
He then came back to the Philippines to study at the International Academy of Film and TV in Cebu. He went to Los Angeles and found work as actor-director in UrbanFlix and the network of the clothing brand FUBU.
He has since made some 30 short films which have been invited and even won awards in some international film festivals, including the Cannes Filmfest. He made his first full length feature last year, “Ginhawa”, an entry in the Cinemalaya Filmfest.
The film stars Andrew Ramsay (the brother of Derek) as a young boxer and is about his sad experiences with the sport. It won the Cinemalaya best supporting actress award for Ruby Ruiz as Andrew’s mom and she’s now also nominated in the Eddys Awards. The film also got nominations in the Urian Awards, including best actor for Andrew.
Now, the 30-year old Lat has joined the Vivamax stable of filmmakers and his first movie is “Sugar Baby”. It’s about an exclusive club called Paraiso that offers Sugar Babies to Sugar Daddies, with Jeffrey Hidalgo as the manager.
Jeffrey’s own Sugar Baby is played by Robb Guinto as Rica, who has a good friend, Azi Acosta as Jennifer. Azi is married to Mon Mendoza, who is a wife beater. When their child gets sick, Azi asks the help of Robb so she can also work in the club as a Sugar Baby.
“I want to thank Viva for assembling an amazing cast for my first movie with them,” he says. “They really brought to life on screen the characters I have in mind when I wrote the script. It’s a great ensemble and we had good team work. It was exciting to work with them dahil mababait lahat sila. So don’t miss ‘Sugar Baby’ when it starts streaming on November 24.”
