Weaving together old film reels and dreamscapes, Leonor Will Never Die showcases the bold filmmaking voice of one of Filipino cinema’s brightest young directors, Martika Ramirez Escobar. Leonor Will Never Die is Escobar’s feature-length debut and also makes her only the second director from the Philippines to land a spot in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition at the Sundance Film Festival.
Leonor Will Never Die tells the story of elderly retired filmmaker Leonor, who is living with her son Rudie. She has not paid electricity bills for months, her ex-movie star husband is no longer in the picture, and there are flashes of grief over the loss of her other son Ronwaldo from years ago. Knocked into a coma from a falling television disposed from a window, Leonor enters a curious, in-between place. She finds herself in the middle of one of her half-written action screenplays — and with a chance to imagine and write a different life for herself.
On what inspired such a playful, multi-layered story, Manila-born Escobar shares that the spark for Leonor Will Never Die emerged from a conversation with a filmmaking friend at a film workshop in 2014. “We wondered why out of the hundreds of Filipino action films, none of them were about an ‘action [film] grandma,’” Escobar said. This idea then evolved into having an “action grandma” who was reflecting on her life’s joys and tribulations and wishing for a chance to make different decisions. Leonor Will Never Die is also Escobar’s love letter to cinema and a homage to her predecessors. “I see filmmaking as one of my greatest teachers, as a friend, and as a therapist,” Escobar added. “I've learned a lot about life from making films and watching films.”
Seasoned producers Monster Jimenez and Mario Cornejo also joined the project. “Martika is a standout. She can work as a cinematographer, director and writer,” said Jimenez, on why she chose to work with Escobar. “I was just fascinated with her short films. If you've seen her short films, it's actually even crazier, if that’s possible.” Leonor Will Never Die features Sheila Francisco in the leading role of Leonor, with Bong Cabrera and Rocky Salumbides in supporting roles. Francisco has acted for both theatre and screen and is the first Filipina to have performed at the Royal National Theater of London (in 2001).
“It's like eight years of begging from different people,” Escobar shared with a laugh, when she recounts the journey of bringing Leonor Will Never Die to fruition. She has spent a good part of the last decade developing the script at multiple workshops, finding collaborators, putting together a network for funding and working on other projects, before finally making the film. Reflecting on the final form of Leonor Will Never Die screening at Sundance, Escobar shared, “For me, the spirit of the script remains in the film.”
The production of Leonor Will Never Die emerged out of a collaborative process. Scenes were revised on set, based on the feedback of the producers and actors. Escobar’s production philosophy seems to inhabit the same kind of self-reflexivity of the cinematic medium that the film itself engages with. “It's a perpetually changing script. We did a lot of versions, we tried a lot of things, we removed a lot of scenes,” Escobar said.
Wrapping up principal photography at the end of 2019, Escobar began scheduling for additional re-shoots in February 2020, just as the Covid-19 pandemic began to hit. Escobar then had to work through the tedious editing process with editor Lawrence Ang almost entirely online. This difficulty was compounded by the nature of the film’s narrative, which demanded complex editing work to make sense of its many film-within-a-film layers. “It's almost like Martika asked for it. She wrote a film that was difficult to do in post-production, and we did it in the pandemic,” shared producer Jimenez, on the uncanny parallel between the Leonor Will Never Die’s reflections on the filmmaking process, and the production’s real-life journey. “You have that last act between the editor and the director talking about whether this will ever end. Martika and I have been talking about this ending for — I'm not kidding — three years. We've literally tried it, we shot all the endings that we could think of.”
Escobar received the email that her film was selected for Sundance competition while on her way to a film shoot. “I was confused, I thought it was a wrong email. This is beyond a dream. I'm really happy actually for the team because [this film is] really a labour of love,” Escobar said. Jimenez also shared that it was important to Escobar that the world premiere of Leonor Will Never Die would be in a physical cinema, not online. “We really had to go look for a place where it would show in a theater and Sundance was one of those few festivals at that time who was sure about that.”
Unfortunately, the latest Omicron wave scuppered plans to hold physical screenings in Park City, Utah, and the Sundance Film Festival announced the move online on January 5. The announcement was particularly devastating for Escobar, but the team has tried to look at the positives. “We've been getting a lot of meetings, and they're interested about the next thing we're going to do,” Jimenez shared. “We're lucky to also already land someone to take care of festivals for us. It’s just one of those blessings of being a Sundance film.”
