Anac Ti Pating (Martin Masadao, Sineng Pambansa 2012 Best Picture Winner)

This charming little film tells the story of an ambitious Baguio kid aiming to make it good in Metro Manila. Armed with a few hundreds of pesos and a story manuscript, the intrepid Sixto Mangaoang takes the city bus in order to meet up with a publisher.

It had been quite a journey for the bullied fifth-grader. He gets encouragement from his English teacher and hones his writing skills. He manages to come up with an amazing tale about a highly adaptive shark that runs away and lives in the boondocks.

Highly adaptive students have been featured in two excellent films, Mes de Guzman’s Ang Daan Patungong Kalimugtong and Auraeus Solito’s Pisay. The former had a pair of siblings so focused on their studies that they can endure walking for miles in ruthlessly cold mornings. Meanwhile, Solito’s film featured a teacher asking his class of brilliant students, ‘why did the fish leave the seas?’ The answer was it had to leave its oxygen-poor surroundings and adapt to new feeding and breathing conditions.

Just like the bullied, chubby Pisay student Mat who’d needed a breath of fresh air, Sixto needs a breather from bullies and parental abuse. He draws inspiration from his shark tale and decides to run away. He is, I hope I get it right, what Ilocanos call ‘anac ti pating’ or one who is fearless, and wily. He is determined to pursue his dream even if it means leaving his family.

Sixto, who’d thought of going to Philippine Science High School, is a smart kid who knows how to fight his battles. He might not have relatives in Metro Manila but he sure has an ace up his sleeve in Doctor Rayos. The latter is the same person who’d shown him pictures of flooded Baguio, which makes the shark tale somewhat believable.

The film Anac Ti Pating has genteel warmth and wicked humor that makes it likeable. I loved the kodakan moments on Christmas eve. There’s something funny with the way Sixto engages in a swear word jousting with a Korean neighbor. Watch out, too, for the cameo of Kawayan de Guia.

The kid who portrayed Sixto is not the abrasive type of brat. His command of English is just right. English-speaking kids, most often, mar films made by Fil-Americans (e.g. Ron Morales' Santa Mesa and Tyrone Acierto’s The Grave Bandits). Poor Filipino kids are made to speak fluent English because it is convenient for the films’ target non-Filipino audience. On the other hand, Sixto is believable as an intelligent, English-speaking student. He is also the type of kid who can survive in the jungle city of Manila. Yeah, with his street smart ways and Ilocano blood in his veins, he’ll go places just like the Ilocano shark, Teófilo Yldefonzo, and reap literary honors and awards just like F. Sionil Jose.