Petersen Vargas, the director of the 2016 Cinema One Originals Best Picture 2 Cool 2 Be 4gotten, has been selected for the third edition of the Southeast Asia Fiction Film Lab (SEAFIC), making him the program's first Filipino participant.


2 Cool 2 Be 4gotten Movie Poster (Photo from 2 Cool 2 Be 4gotten's Facebook page)

SEAFIC is an intensive script development lab for Southeast Asian filmmakers which aims to help attendees enhance their feature-length fiction films in a period of eight (8) months. Its participants will undergo three (3) lab sessions.

Director Vargas' second full feature, Some Nights I Feel Like Walking, is one of SEAFIC's five (5) selected projects by Southeast Asian filmmakers. It is about the single-night adventure of a wealthy teenage runaway who joins a four-man crew of street hustlers in a cross-country odyssey. Vargas has teamed up with producers Alemberg Ang and Jade Castro to develop the film.

The Film Development Council of the Philippines (FDCP), the country's film agency, has partnered with SEAFIC to further encourage and support Filipino filmmakers to develop quality films that can cross borders and have international appeal. Before being selected, Vargas attended the SEAFIC Open House last November 2018 as part of FDCP's delegation of filmmakers.


Filipino Participants for the SEAFIC Open House 2018

"SEAFIC has supported incredible Southeast Asian filmmakers in the last couple of years, with most of their film projects achieving acclaim worldwide. We are very happy that Petersen Vargas has been selected to be part of this rigorous Lab that guarantees for the meaningful and quality development of his film," said FDCP Chairperson Liza Diño.

Other Southeast Asian filmmakers who will take part in SEAFIC are Makbul Mubarak from Indonesia (Autobiography), Ash Mayfair from Vietnam (Skin of Youth), The Maw Naing from Myanmar (The Women), and Nguyen Le Hoang Viet from Vietnam (Till the Cave Fills).

The first SEAFIC Lab session will be at Monoceros Resort in Chiang Mai, Thailand from February 24 to March 3, 2019, while the second session will also be in Chiang Mai. The final session and SEAFIC Open House will be held in November.