International Premiere | In Competition | Best Screenplay Candidate | White Mulberry Award Candidate
Philippines, Japan, Malaysia, 2025, 126’, Japanese, Filipino
Directed by: Janus Victoria
Screenplay: Janus Victoria
Cinematography (color): Ashizawa Akiko
Editing: Soo Mun Thye
Production Design: Eero Yves S. Francisco
Music: Jai Saldajeno
Sound Design: Corinne De San Jose
Producers: Lorna Tee, Dan Villegas, Masumi Soga
Executive Producers: Maria Sophia Atayde-Marudo, Jossette Atayde, Jim G. Baltazar, Dan Villegas, Antoinette Jadaone, Lorna Tee, Ho Yuhang, Masumi Soga, Manet A. Dayrit, Shozo Ichiyama, Janus Victoria
Cast: Lily Franky, Maria Isabel Lopez, Soliman Cruz, Kazuko Yoshiyuki, Charlie Dizon
Date of First Release in Territory: TBA
Filipinos love visiting Japan, so much so that it has become the second most preferred outbound destination of Filipinos in 2024. It has come to the point that the Japanese government has advised visa applicants to send their applications two months in advance due to the surge. Many look to Japan for its efficient quality of life and financial opportunities. There are currently over 300,000 Filipinos working in Japan, making them the fourth largest foreign workforce in the country, mainly in the manufacturing and hospitality retail industry. So for a Japanese to trade his first-world life for a third-world one can seem baffling for Filipinos, such as those who encounter Yoji upon his arrival. “You’re just lucky, you can just go up and go anytime, because you have a Japanese passport,” Minerva, his late mother’s caregiver, reminds him in Manila.
In Janus Victoria’s superb debut film, the Philippines offers lonely salaryman Yoji the last bastion of happiness. Unmoored by any meaningful personal connections in Japan, Yoji gambles on a life in the Philippines for a second wind in life. In Minerva, Yoji finds a kindred spirit or perhaps a new guide to life. His first few minutes in Manila stand in contrast to the life he’s used to in Tokyo. The lights are more vivid, the street corners are noisier (“The music is still loud. You said it will stop at 10 pm,” he complains to the hotel desk), and neighborhood bums offer him a drink even though he’s a total stranger.
Diamonds in the Sand is one of three Filipino films in 2024 that intersect with Japanese culture (the other two are the serial killer hunting film Crosspoint and the Rikuzentakata City-set family drama Kono Basho). Japan and the Philippines have developed close ties since World War II (colonial past notwithstanding). The two countries have become cultural and economic allies, with former PM Kishida Fumio calling the relationship at its “golden age” when he visited the Philippines in 2024 – though one character points out early in the film that it’s in Thailand that Japan invests the most in the Southeast Asian region.
Despite the different circumstances in the quality of living, the two countries aren’t that far apart in the world index for happiness. Yoji, enamored by the boisterous life in the streets of Manila, rediscovers what it means to connect to another human being, and finds that bonds are forged by something other than kinship. Shot by frequent Kurosawa Kiyoshi collaborator Ashizawa Akiko, Diamonds in the Sand unfolds at a languorous pace, allowing silences to slowly link up to the ties that Minerva and Yoji are searching for.
GUEST:
Janus VICTORIA, director
Lily FRANKY, actor
Lorna TEE, producer
Janus Victoria
Janus Victoria is a writer and director born and based in Manila. She has been a long-time media practitioner and has produced current affairs documentaries for Philippine broadcast media. Her first short film, Hopia Express, won the Best Short Film award at the 2006 Cinemanila International Film Festival. Her short documentary Encounters with Silence, about lonely death (kodokushi) in Tokyo apartments, premiered at the DMZ International Documentary Film Festival in South Korea. Diamonds in the Sand is her first feature film.
FILMOGRAPHY
2010 – Dalaw (short)
2012 – Aurora, My Aurora (short)
2016 – Viva Escolta (short)
2017 – Encounters with Silence
(short)
2025 – Diamonds in the Sand