Synopsis

This film is about a family of Overseas Filipino Workers in their home in Manila. Prisco Escobal, worked in Saudi Arabia for almost three decades. Today, at 65, Prisco is back home with his wife, sharing stories about the days when they were apart, their children, and their idea of an ideal family. It is now their four children who are away from home, following their father’s footsteps of working outside the islands of our country in hopes of having a better life.

Director

• 

  Martika Ramirez Escobar
  

  Tisoy (2015)
  Pusong Bato (2014)
  Dindo (2014)
  Limang Taon ni Lola (2013)

  The Escobals were the perfect non-actors I wanted to get for a short narrative film I wrote. However, on the shoot day itself, they all felt uncomfortable following the script because it made them feel out of character, with words and phrases that they wouldn't say in real life. That’s when I learned about their situation. Almost everyone in their family are OFWs, previously driven to take that path because of a lack of options, but now has become a conscious decision for the newer generation. So instead of shooting the script, I spent the day, and a couple more, hanging around their home, talking about their family and how it was like to live and work away from their loved ones.
  There are over a million Overseas Filipino Workers in Saudi Arabia alone, and they are often called the “unsung heroes of the Philippines” because of their contribution to our country’s economic growth. It's a sacrifice that means not only having to leave your family and but also being ready to face the bigger problems outside our country that are not in our control.
  Being inside the home of a family of OFWs, you will see traces of the ones who have left — Balikbayan Boxes (Repatriate boxes), photographs, greeting cards, computer screens and TVs, and paper bills. As if the whole presence of a person has been reduced to these objects. Thus, this film becomes a scrapbook of sorts of an OFW and his wife — a telling of their musings that shares with us a kind of family that functions despite the distance between them.

Review

<Quadrilaterals> portrays the life of a 'OFW(Overseas Filipino Worker)' family who willingly accepted irony. Decades ago, a family decided to scatter far for the future of their children. The father took off to Saudi Arabia to earn money and the mother remained alone to take care of the kids. The two-year-old baby started crawling at the second visit, then entered school, and then became a teenager. As time passed, this child became a parent struggling to make ends meet for the family, and ends up making the same choice as his parents. The film may pass by in the blink of an eye, but it projects this solid time of an entire generation into an everday objet. And inside this objet exists the figures’ exhaustion and longing. The family photograph taken with the quadrilateral 'Balikbayan Box' as the background wholly conveys their time and emotion. Through <Quadrilaterals>, we will be able to ponder upon the most realistic irony of family relationships, where leaving becomes one’s best. [Choi Min-a]

Credits

• Director, Producer, Cinematographer, Editor  Martika Ramirez Escobar
• Sound  Grace Simbulan, Alex Poblete

Contribution & World Sales

• Contribution & World Sales  Martika Ramirez Escobar
• E-Mail  martika.ramirez.escobar@gmail.com