‘Signal Rock’ fails to land on Oscars’ foreign language film shortlist

FILE: Chito S. Roño’s Signal Rock (Photo: Signal Rock/Facebook)

Philippine bet Signal Rock ended its Oscars journey after failing to land on the shortlist of the 91st Oscars under the Best Foreign Language Film category.

Chito Roño’s Signal Rock was among the 87 films originally considered in the Foreign Language Film category, however, it was not included to the top nine movies chosen to advance to the next round of voting.

According to the list that Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences released on Monday, December 17, those films that still have a chance to bag the title are as follows:

• Colombia’s Birds of Passage
• Denmark’s The Guilty
• Germany’s Never Look Away
• Japan’s Shoplifters
• Kazakhstan’s Ayka
• Lebanon’s Capernaum
• Mexico’s Roma
• Poland’s Cold War
• South Korea’s Burning

Members of the Los Angeles-based Academy from all branches screened all entries under the said category between mid-October and December 10.

“The group’s top six choices, augmented by three additional selections voted by the Academy’s Foreign Language Film Award Executive Committee, constitute the shortlist,” it said.

Last September, Chito expressed how glad he and his team were when they heard that his “passion project” was among the films chosen by the Film Academy of the Philippines (FAP) to compete for the Best Foreign Language Film award.

“Hindi namin akalain na kami ang mapipili sa dami nang isinabmit(We did not expect that our film will be chosen among many other films that were submitted),” he told ABS-CBN.

“But to be chosen to be the one to represent us sa (in the) Academy [Awards] sa (in) America, although submission pa lang ito, sobrang honored na siyempre kasi (it is just a submission, we are really honored because) among the other films, we were chosen,” he continued.

Signal Rock revolves around the story of a boy named Intoy, who is left to take care of his parents when his sister, Vicky, went abroad for work.

Unlike those who live in urban areas where people can communicate well and have modern technologies, Intoy has to climb a high rock in order to get a good signal for his clunky mobile phone which he uses to converse with his sister.

The film was starred by Christian Bables, Daria Ramirez, Nanding Josef, Mon Confiado, Elora Españo, Keanna Reeves, Francis Magundayao, among others. The cast and crew shot the film in Biri, Samar.