The story behind Cinemalaya’s Audience Choice winner ‘Respeto’
Respeto won the Audience Choice Award in the recently concluded Cinemalaya Awards Night.
Its scriptwriter Njel de Mesa wrote the entire story and put all his creative ideas.
According to Njel, he had to immerse himself in the slums for a week and had to write eleven (11) revisions to the script.
He self-financed the entire writing process and production in the very beginning since Cinemalaya required him to submit a full script before being considered.
In order to guarantee the effectiveness and the dramatic life of the script, Njel financed three script readings and the early auditions–to guarantee the authenticity of the language and dynamics of the characters before the CCP auditions and principal photography.
Main Title characters: Hendrix, Doc, Breezy G, Mando, Connie etc. were all names and characters created by Njel de Mesa
Njel is a Multi-Palanca Award winning writer and is the playwright of the cult-classic, SubText. He is also a singer-songwriter under Universal Records with new radio singles: “Puso Ang Sandata” and “Magkaisa” which is available from iTunes, Spotify, Amazon Music, Deezer, and Spinnr
To write the script, Njel got inspiration from the works of National Artists: Virgilio Almario and Bienvenido Lumbera, Frank G. Rivera, and some of the rappers he’s worked with since he also dabbles into rap music.
He is definitely a truly artist and his audience are waiting for his next film.
