Bianca Balbuena (Philippines)
Nomination Detail
Winner, FIAPF Award, Outstanding Achievement in Film, 2017
Bianca Balbuena is a 30-year old producer, writer, co-founder and CEO of Epicmedia Productions Inc which has produced over 25 feature films most notably Venice Film Festival 2009 Lion of the Future and Orrizonti Best Film: Engkwentro by Pepe Diokno and Berlinale 2016 Silver Bear A Lullaby To The Sorrowful Mystery by Lav Diaz.
She has attended Produire Au Sud, Rotterdam Producers Lab, Talent Campus Tokyo, Cannes’ La Fabrique des Cinemas du Monde, EAVE Ties That Bind and Berlinale Talent Project Market where she won the ARTE Prize for her film, Above The Clouds, her first venture into French co-production. She has mentored in film labs and served as jury of film festivals in Fribourg and Durban. She was also nominated Best Foreign Producer at the Madrid International Film Festival.
Her next collaboration with Lav Diaz is his upcoming musical feature The Season Of The Devil which will premiere early next year. She has produced films which have premiered and won in festivals such as Venice, Berlinale, San Sebastián, Toronto, Busan, Tokyo, Thessaloniki, Rotterdam, Taipei Golden Horse, Sydney and Karlovy Vary. In the Philippines, she is most known for producing Antoinette Jadaone’s That Thing Called Tadhana which became one of the highest grossing independent films in Philippine box office history in terms of investment-profit ratio.
She is currently producing Bradley Liew’s Motel Acacia which was part of the 2017 Jerusalem Sam Spiegel International Film Lab and has been supported by BiFan’s NAFF IT Project and EAVE Ties That Bind. Liew’s debut feature, Singing In Graveyards, premiered at Venice Film Festival Critics Week 2016 and is chosen to compete at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards 2017 along with yet another film she produced, Those Long Haired Nights.
Her mission is to strengthen collaborations within the region and help deserving directors bring their films to the global scale. She also believes that cinema is our voice of struggle and hope in these dark times, a powerful voice that has the ability to affect change.
The Asia Pacific Screen Academy expresses its respect for and acknowledgement of the South East Queensland Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. We pay our respects to the Traditional Owners of country, including the custodial communities on whose land works are created and celebrated by the Asia Pacific Screen Awards. We acknowledge the continuing connection to land, waters and communities. We also pay our respects to Elders, past and present. We recognise the integral role Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and First Nations peoples continue to play in storytelling and celebration spaces.