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For two consecutive years, in 2023 and 2024, producers Girlie Rodis, Celeste Legaspi, and Rachel Alejandro submitted the material for Song of the Fireflies to the Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF), but the movie musical didn’t make the cut, even as the trio were the same people behind the acclaimed musical Ang Larawan, which won best picture at the festival’s 2017 edition.
Ironically, the film is now set to make its world premiere alongside the 10 feature entries of the 50th MMFF, including Best Picture winner Green Bones, at the second edition of the Manila International Film Festival (MIFF), which aims “to showcase, promote and help uplift Filipino films from the Philippines in Hollywood and beyond.”
The 2025 MIFF roster also includes titles like Manuel Conde’s post-war epic Genghis Khan, the first Filipino entry at the Venice Film Festival; Doroteo Ines’ restored silent film A Filipino in America, touted as among the earliest onscreen depictions of the Filipino experience in the US; and Cathy Garcia-Sampana’s Hello, Love, Again, the first Filipino film to enter the US box office top 10.
Originally set to run from January 30 to February 2, 2025, MIFF, however, postponed its screenings to later dates, March 4 to 7, 2025, due to disastrous wildfires engulfing Southern California.
In a statement on the MIFF site, chairman and co-founder Omen Ortiz says this year’s MIFF will also “honor the frontline workers and volunteers, including the Filipino first responders, who are heroically battling the wildfires.”
Directed by King Palisoc and penned by Sarge Lacuesta, Song of the Fireflies tracks the beginnings of the Bohol-based and world-renowned Loboc Children’s Choir (LCC), starring Morissette Amon (in her big-screen debut), Noel Comia Jr, and Krystal Brimner.
Much like the story it follows, the movie musical also cycled through several hiccups. After its director got onboard in 2018, the trailer was filmed a year later, then released on the first day of 2020 to hype up public interest. The film was supposed to debut sometime late 2020, but weeks prior to production, the pandemic hit the country, followed by a super typhoon in Bohol (the shooting location) in 2021, before filming finally resumed in 2023.
Ahead of the movie premiere, I spoke to Palisoc about seeking the film’s story, creative decisions and recalibrations, and collaborating with a national artist. The conversation has been edited for clarity.
Can you talk about the seed idea for Song of the Fireflies? How did you first get involved in the project?
I believe the idea sprouted after the Ang Larawan producers (Girlie Rodis, Celeste Legaspi, and Rachel Alejandro) saw the LCC perform during a screening of the film in Bohol. They were inspired by the angelic voices of the kids and the story of its founder Alma Taldo. During the talkback after the special screening held last January 9, Girlie shared how they were moved by how a simple public school teacher was able to uplift the lives of many children through music.
My involvement started in 2018; at the time they had already enlisted Sarge Lacuesta to do initial research on the subjects. The producer of my previous film Tandem recommended me to Celeste (who was already familiar with some of my work because I did a few music videos for her son Ige’s band), and thankfully they trusted me enough to direct Song of the Fireflies.
After filming in 2019, the movie was supposed to screen in late 2020. Obviously, that didn’t happen. Can you share the highs and lulls the project went through?
We shot for the trailer in 2019 and released it on the first day of 2020, with the intent of drumming up interest and trying to capture the tone that we wanted to go for. We were in the middle of location hunting in Manila when news of the viral outbreak came out. Song of the Fireflies was supposed to be the big project of the year. We were weeks away from filming. Production was supposed to start [in] April of that year.
So when the pandemic happened, everything came down crashing. For a very long time, we weren’t sure if we [would] be able to continue the project. Our cast mostly consisted of kids, we didn’t know what they would look like in a few years time. We had already spent a portion of our production budget shooting the trailer, so we had very limited resources as well. And there was a big typhoon (Odette) that hit Bohol in 2021; our primary location Loboc was badly hit by the storm. The locations we had initially found were suddenly not viable for filming.
So there was a lot of uncertainty for the film. Thankfully, at the end of 2022, things were getting better which allowed us to do initial prep. We’re lucky to have been able to retain the same cast from 2019. Noel [Comia Jr] and Krystal [Brimner] were obviously a bit older from our previous shoot, but still had that youthful energy that we needed for their characters. The limited budget forced us to revisit the script again and find a way to tighten the story, and time allowed the town of Loboc to heal and recover, so when we had scheduled principal photography, the town had returned to its quiet charm and pristine beauty.
The narrative follows the journey of the Loboc Children’s Choir from Bohol to the world stage, and some of the actors in the film are also part of the choir group. How pivotal was this casting decision?
We have always wanted to tell the story of the LCC in the most authentic way possible, which is why casting the actual choir members was always a consideration. Pero hindi siya madali (But it wasn’t easy). We had to audition the kids and give them workshops prior to filming to equip them with the necessary tools for acting.
It was through the workshops that we were able to identify the ones that really fit the criteria we were looking for the supporting characters. But all of them really had this sincere aura around them whenever they were in front of the camera. It was nothing like I’ve ever experienced before. Their performances felt so honest, it was so special.
Given the four-year delay, were there any fundamental changes in the script written by Sarge Lacuesta? What was it like working with him?
The core of the story was retained until the end; it was how to show it that really had to [be revisited]. Like I said earlier, the limited budget really forced us to tighten the script as much as possible, which was close to impossible because it’s a period film set in the province, with mostly kids as the main characters.
We unfortunately had to drop some of the big sequences that Sarge had originally written, and find a way to make the story work without compromising too much the scale of the film. But it worked out quite nicely in the end; it allowed us to really highlight what the important things were to us.
What was the visual motivation for Song of the Fireflies?
There’s a duality that we wanted to highlight in Song of the Fireflies — the peaceful and almost magical stillness of small town Loboc, and the chaotic, overwhelming mess that is Manila in the ‘80s.
So, in the Bohol scenes, we wanted to go as wide as possible in order to capture the charming and picturesque imagery of the town. We also allowed ourselves to let the shots linger for as long as it could, in the hopes of simulating life in the province. Japanese filmmakers such as Yasushiro Ozu and Makoto Shinkai served as inspirations for capturing slice-of-life moments in the story.
For Manila we wanted it to feel as tight and cramped as possible, using long lenses as much as possible in most scenes. We tried as much as possible to make the blocking as busy as possible, which is a stark contrast to what we see in the earlier scenes. We turned to a lot of Filipino films in the ‘70s and ‘80s such as Manila by Night and Batch ‘81 as inspiration for the composition and color palettes.
National Artist for Music Ryan Cayabyab, who previously wrote the music for Ang Larawan, serves as the composer of Song of the Fireflies. How did it feel to have the opportunity to work with such a giant?
I remember that call with Mr. C when we had to talk about Alitaptap, the song that would eventually [be] used for the film. I was trying to give as [many] references as I could to describe what I had in mind for the music, and he only had one question: what is the feeling that you wanted to feel when you hear the song? I stopped in my tracks thinking, “Wow, that’s all he ever really needed.” It was such an inspiring experience.
The word I told him was “magical.” The rest is history.
As a follow-up to that, what were the artistic considerations to accommodate the music? Did you ever intend to shoot in a studio, instead of filming in location? Things like that.
We knew that our priority was to film in real life locations, because as much as this was intended to have a lot of musical performances, we wanted the film to look cinematic and authentic as much as possible. There were some attempts to do live recordings of the performances — some worked, some didn’t, and that’s okay. There were many ways to bring out the truth without sacrificing the original intent.
Scenes were shot 100% in locations, and the performances were done both live and in recording studios — some actual studios, others makeshift (like that time we covered the hotel lobby with black backing to record some choir performances).
How was it having Morissette Amon as the movie’s lead? How did you draw out the performance the movie needed from her, especially because this is also her big-screen debut?
Morissette was the best person to play real life choirmaster Alma Taldo because she has such a big heart, and it really showed whether she was in front of the camera or not. All I ever had to do was to give her the space to let it out. She was so dedicated to the film and the role, she had already memorized all the names of the choir kids by day 2. It was Mori’s openness and generosity that allowed her to bring out really emotional performances. – Rappler.com
