Filipino documentary ‘Divine Factory’ sets up for a global release

Formerly known as Holy Craft, Joseph Mangat’s unreleased Divine Factory has been picked up by Hong Kong-based film sales company Asian Shadows for global representation.

The feature-length documentary spotlights Antipolo’s TML (Three Mighty Lords) Holy Crafts factory and explores the lives of the artisans behind the country’s massive religious figurine industry.

Through this study, Mangat poses these question to Filipinos: “How do you balance money and religion? Is religion compromised by money?”

Shot back in 2015, this homecoming project for US-based Mangat garnered international press when it won the Docs-in-Progress Award at the Cannes Film Market in 2020. It is the first Filipino film to join the Asian Shadows collection, which includes works by prominent documentarians like Wang Bing and Soda Kazuhiro.

“With their impeccable taste and unwavering support for Asian Cinema, especially for Southeast Asian films, we are more than honored to be the first Filipino film represented by Asian Shadows,” said producer Alem Ang, who is developing several other projects like Sheron Dayoc’s 6th Finger, which will be presented at the Berlin’s European Film Market next month.

As for director Joseph Mangat, he has already begun shooting his next film about Baguio’s horseback tourism business. You can now stream his previous documentary, Bidyoke, for free on Rappler Act One. – Rappler.com