These big-name directors can now create their dream movies, said festival organizing committee chair Laurice Guillen of five filmmakers set to compete in the first-ever Directors’ Showcase category in the annual Cinemalaya Philippine Independent Film Festival.

The new category is for Filipino filmmakers, who have directed at least three full-length feature films that have been released commercially. Mario O’Hara, Mark Meily, Gil Portes, Joselito Altarejos and Joel Lamangan will compete in the July festival.

O’Hara’s “Ang Paglilitis ni Andres Bonifacio” is about the trial of Andres Bonifacio under the revolutionary government of Emilio Aguinaldo.

Birth of RP politics

“This was the start of Philippine politics,” O’Hara said on Wednesday’s press launch at the Cultural Center of the Philippines in Pasay City. “I thought of the story when a nephew asked me...why a hero killed another hero. What really happened? Is Bonifacio really guilty of treason?”

Meily’s “Isang Pirasong Buhay” tells the story of Lizette, who, wanting to work abroad, sells her kidney to an Arab. When a law is passed banning organ transplants between Filipinos and foreigners, Lizette agrees to marry the patient, though they have never met, for the surgery to push through.

“The story is inspired by the story of a friend, who works as an organ transplant coordinator in the US,” Meily said. “I wanted to do the film in America, but I [found that] there are more inspiring stories here.”

Altarejos’ “Pink Halo Halo” is about a boy named Natoy, who finds joy in the simplest things, especially halo-halo filled with pink gelatin and red sago. Until he sees a TV report about a wounded soldier pleading for rescue. The soldier was his father.

“Natoy travels to seek help from officials,” said Altarejos. “My father was a soldier; he died when I was 6. Families are helpless in times of war and violence.”

Portes’ “Two Funerals” is a road movie about a mother’s journey from Tuguegarao to recover her daughter’s body in Sorsogon after a funeral mix-up.

“I came across the story during a trip to my hometown in Quezon,” Portes said. “It was reported in a tabloid.”

“Very few movies have been made about students, who fought against the dictatorship in the ’70s,” said Lamangan, director of “Sigwa.” “I’m a product of that era. I’m very thankful to Cinemalaya for this chance.”

“Sigwa” is based on true accounts of an American reporter assigned here in the 1970s to do a story of student activism in Manila. Lamangan said the story features four other characters, who were former student activists. “Forty years later, they reunite to discover that they now believe in different things,” Lamangan added.

The five finalists will be awarded a seed production grant of P500,000 and an additional P100,000 as post-production grant.