MANILA, Philippines—One of the Cinemalaya movies getting a lot of attention and praise in this year’s ongoing festival is Mike Sandejas’ “Dinig Sana Kita.” The film is a unique and compelling drama about two very different young people—Niña, a troubled rocker, and Kiko, a deaf-mute orphan. Filmmaker Sandejas had given himself a difficult task: To show how such initially dissimilar individuals are in fact mirror images of each other. Even more impressively, he succeeds.

Niña (Zoe Sandejas) can hear, but her seemingly uncaring parents don’t listen to her, so she might as well be mute. Their seeming lack of concern for her has forced her to seek refuge and surcease in the loud world of rock music, but the comfort it provides is temporary, and she soon has to confront her familial demons.

Opportunity

The opportunity to do this is provided by an infraction she commits at school, which prompts school officials to send her to Baguio to attend a workshop with some deaf youths. The idea is to teach her to care about people other than herself, and thus get over what her teachers feel is her antisocial and rebellious behavior.

At first, Niña finds the deaf youths irritating and pathetic. With the help of the camp director (Robert Seña), however, she gradually opens up and stops thinking only about herself, for a change.

For his part, Kiko (Romalito Mallari) is not only deaf, but he is also an orphan who desperately needs to find his parents. Like Niña, he feels unloved, and this has warped his view of himself in a big way. Kiko’s escape hatch is his love for dancing, which he’s been able to develop despite his deafness (by feeling the vibrations of the music he’s dancing to).

Not surprisingly, Niña and Kiko, the apparent polar opposites, are drawn to each other—and, eventually help each other become whole. This is a difficult plot and character arc to trace vividly onscreen, but writer-director Sandejas proves to be up to the daunting task at hand.

He is able to make his film’s complex material winningly accessible to viewers, especially to young people who may not be physically disabled but suffer from psychological equivalents in their own lives.

Fusion

With his deft contrapuntal use of music and silence, the filmmaker compellingly draws viewers into his protagonists’ initially opposite worlds, then shows how those worlds contrast and then converge in a telling fusion that says a lot about our need to communicate on one hand, and the tragedy of all forms of miscommunication on the other.

In the hands of a lesser artist, this material could have ended up as a well-intended lecture or sermon. Happily, Sandejas’ inspired handling avoids numerous tautological traps and, aided by his lead players’ luminous and informed portrayals, emerges as one of the most effective and popular productions in this year’s festival—a must-see in our book.