“I felt very honoured being part of the Venice Film Festival, seeing our Philippine flag flying alongside others at the Sala Giardino,” shares Manacsa with Tatler.

The Venice Film Festival was far from the horizon of the filmmaker when she was making it. All these years, this short film was something more of a passion project for Manacsa. She started conceptualising Cross my Heart and Hope to Die in 2019 before she attended the Asian Film Academy. Although the screenplay she wrote didn’t get much funding at the time, the concept stuck with her.

“It was based on a story of someone close to me that I kept on hearing—she cleaned the blood of someone who died on the floor. That was the peak of the film for me. And in my process, I went backwards to figure out how she ended up in that moment,” says Manacsa. She clarified that although everything else was fictional, she stayed true to her source by making the protagonist female.

Manacsa entered the University of the Philippines (UP) Diliman to study physics, hoping to become an engineer someday. “I grew up thinking that science and math were my strengths,” she says. But realisations soon kicked into Manacsa, thinking that there must be something more she would enjoy doing. “At that time when I was confused, I would spend my time in the Cine Adarna in UP,” Manacsa continues. There she has found comfort in this kind of space despite the darkness in the theatre, watching films with everyone else. “I didn’t really grow up thinking of cinema, but I grew up with cinema,” the filmmaker says, as watching films was something she enjoyed doing either alone or with her family and friends.

Aside from doing her own short films, Manacsa has been working as a freelance production designer since she finished film school. She has worked with some of today’s lauded filmmakers like Carlo Francisco Manatad, Petersen Vargas, and Martika Ramirez Escobar, who served as her director of photography for Cross my Heart and Hope to Die.

Read also: Martika Ramirez Escobar talks about Sundance and why trust is important in today’s independent film industry

“I really don’t have a mentor for directing. However, I have filmmaker Mervine Aquino always with me in my writing process, and of course, my producers Carlo Francisco Manatad and Chad Cabigon whom I talk to about my writings and film projects,” Manacsa shares.

Manacsa enjoys the writing and directing part of filmmaking. “As early as the film’s writing process, I get to be specific in my treatment. Looking at the film in this early stage is different, which makes the shooting part not the difficult part,” she shares. 

For Cross my Heart and Hope to Die, she built the story backwards, trying to figure out what could have led her to that pivotal scene based on an experience of someone she knows. “It wasn’t a comforting feeling, uncovering the exploitation she experienced and more,” Manacsa shares. “It wasn’t about understanding the ‘why’ she did it, but the film was more of witnessing these events in our lives that may seem mundane and fleeting but rather take us on an emotional journey—where they came from and where they end up to with their emotions,” she explains.

The filmmaker attended the Southeast Asian Fiction (SEAFIC) Seed Lab in 2021, an international workshop for writer-directors who haven’t done their feature films yet but plan to. There, Manacsa worked on her directing process and how she writes films. “There was really no pressure for us to make films but it served as a space for us to talk about the paths we want to take,” she recalls. Manacsa had two works on hand when she attended the workshop, which had sessions on Zoom and in Thailand. One was Cross my Heart and Hope to Die and the other was a feature-length film she is still working on. With her short film already having a finished script and treatment deck, the workshop was a good opportunity for her to flesh things out and start filming it afterwards.

Read also: Sundance Film Festival’s first Filipino short film entry: Sonny Calvento’s “Excuse Me, Miss, Miss, Miss”

“Lots of my worries stemmed from my doubt—if I should direct a film. One reason is that it has been long since I last directed. Another reason is I wasn’t sure if the films I was thinking about or planning to do were worth doing,” Manacsa shares. SEAFIC Seed Lab redeemed Manacsa as it was instrumental for her to regain her self-confidence and trust in her work.

“I want to tell a story, as simple as that,” says Manacsa on why she keeps pushing herself as a filmmaker. “The motivation didn’t need to be a specific guided life purpose for me. It just had to start with that one feeling,” she says. “Me making films is not just about myself but the process, the story, and the people who work around me.”

“The fact that you can feel all these different emotions in one sitting is a power that cinema holds,” the filmmaker says. “Sometimes, we think that when we are at our lowest point, we are just sad. But many factors are at play that make you receive a congregation of emotions. Filmmakers vary in ways to showcase that, while audiences have many films to choose from that match how they feel. To find that single film you can connect to is enough to make you through the day or life. That is one of cinema‘s powers that you cannot formulate but discover on your own as a filmmaker.”

Read also: Don Josephus Raphael Eblahan takes pride in his Igorot roots with his short film entry for Sundance

In making Cross my Heart and Hope to Die, Manacsa admits that challenges almost hampered it. Aside from the internal struggle she mentioned earlier, funding the film was difficult. With a limited budget, they had to shoot everything in one long day and at a single location. That meant being exact on what they wanted to achieve for each scene.

“I hope filmmakers find the motivation to tell a story and believe in the story they want to share despite challenges and distractions. That has kept me grounded in my ideals that what matters most is for audiences to experience and appreciate the story,” Manacsa says.

Mila’s emotional journey is the visual point of the film. But the radio drama overarching the scenes was supposed to be more apparent, Manacsa says, in the first drafts of the screenplay. “I was trying to build up what sways the main character’s feelings—the media and her friend—to realise that ‘this is your chance for love’,” explains Manacsa. The film’s sound design by Sum-Sum Shen and Ilya Selikhov exposes Mila’s background thoughts and the pressure she is receiving to contrast the audience’s impression that she is not thinking of her actions.

Read also: Sundance winner Kayla Abuda Galang on the pressures of being an Asian-American filmmaker

The lighting and framing, which Manacsa credits to Escobar, were designed to establish that light hardly enters Mila’s office and as a guide for the audience in Mila’s witnessing of things. “I believe that in the film, a lot is hidden from the viewers because these scenes are all with Mila’s point of view alone. I wanted the audience to experience what the protagonist experiences—that not everything is revealed to her. So, how do you end up with that feeling? What do you feel after watching things unfold?”

“Your choice of coverage in framing helps you build the emotions for your character,” Manacsa says, talking about the long shots used throughout the film, which did not fail in encapsulating every character in the scene and the objects around them. Somehow, it gives a voyeuristic view. But despite the distance and depth of framing, the emotions are palpable and silent cries are heard.

The question of how Mila feels in the end is something Manacsa defers to the character herself and the audience to supplement. We see her raise the volume of the radio to drown herself in the noise and Jorrybel Agoto portrayed her brilliantly with deadpan eyes. But is she really dead inside? The film opens with her wanting to put an end to her life then a glimmer of hope arises out of a stranger. Clearly, that wasn’t the only thing she clung to as her co-worker friend was there inviting her to do a sideline job. Mila also did not easily accept the underperformance of their business as she repeatedly and assertively asked for her rightful wage.

The film reminds me somehow of Reinhold Niebuhr’s Prayer for Serenity, which became a standard prayer for attendees of Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. The prayer tells us about acceptance of the things we cannot change in life and the courage to change those we can. What fills the gap between the two, acceptance and courage, is hope. In life, we hope for things to change while we try our best to change it. In life, we hope that things will be better while we begin to accept that we have done everything we could. Hope lies in waiting and trusting. It is not merely indifference when we retreat or persistence when we refuse to submit. Hope is groomed with time, and as cliché it may seem, there is a silver lining behind the storm cloud.

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