We present the list of winners of the Filipino Academy of Movie Arts and Sciences Awards (FAMAS) 2020 which took place online on Sunday, December 20th, 2020.

About the Awards:
The Filipino Academy of Movie Arts and Sciences Awards (also known as FAMAS Awards) are the annual honors given by the Filipino Academy of Movie Arts and Sciences (FAMAS), an organization composed of prize-winning writers and movie columnists, for achievements in the Philippine cinema for a calendar year. Members of the academy including avid movie viewers, fans or enthusiasts will cast their votes on who should win the statuettes on different categories they were nominated.

Best Picture

The aswang, shapeshifting monsters in Philippine folklore, emerge at night to hunt their prey, striking fear in the community. In today’s Philippines, the aswang are the police and vigilantes who kill with impunity under president Rodrigo Duterte’s ‘war on drugs’ that targets the urban poor. As bodies mount in the streets, the nights in Manila become filled with terror and oppressive dread.

The film follows a child whose parents are in prison and an activist who fearlessly documents the deaths. Threading its way through narrow alleys in Manila’s shanty towns, the camera gives us an unstinting view of a city gripped by violence and corruption. (SGIFF 2020)

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Best Actress:

The protagonist is a saleslady in a local department store. Her everyday life is composed of an exhausting commute home. She deals with the manager who always seems to have something to say about her physical state; her co-worker, Ted who is obviously interested in her but can’t take a hint; and from the catcallers near where she lives. When she finally gets home, there’s no one there but her roommate who couldn’t care less about her. All that is about to change when she reaches the gate to her boarding house and finds a peculiar looking gun right on her doorstep. Suddenly, she can do anything she wants, talk back to whoever she wants, and even hurt anyone she wants. (QCinema)

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Best Actor:

Elijah Canlas for Kalel 15 (Jun R. Lana) – Philippines | 2019 – 105 minutes

Surrounded by tensions and secrets, a teenage boy searches for validation and navigates life with a dysfunctional family following an HIV diagnosis.

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Best Director:

A young woman with determination in her eyes, sits down at a desk at a police station to finally make an official statement regarding her battery. The perpetrator is her own husband, whom the officers won’t even effectively isolate from the protagonist fighting for her life and protecting her six-year-old daughter. This is only the beginning of her journey – a lone fight for the basic right to safety takes a lot of determination, bordering on desperation.

Guitierrez’s shocking, powerful debut is a psychodrama played out in closed, intimate spaces, which avoids pitying the victim and does not overflow with sentimentality. We are watching the strong heroine’s searching for justice and crashing into walls of institutional incompetence, economic exclusion, and animosity from her family and neighbors. “He seemed like such a nice boy…” The director skillfully doses the tension, drawing a powerful portrait of the Philippine society in which the truth is defined by those who can afford a better lawyer. The film, whose artistic consultant was Brillante Mendoza, follows the best traditions of the socially engaged cinema in the Philippines, talking about the mechanisms of power through small, yet moving stories. (Jagoda Murczyńska)

Trailer:

Best Documentary:

Best Short Film:

A 1950s showbiz star, trapped inside a television, crashes down to earth. A frightened but probing indigenous farmer saves her. Deep into the night, the two try their best to engage each other. But glitches, language differences, and the offensive political incorrectness of 1950s TV all get in the way.

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Best Supporting Actress:

Best Supporting Actor:

Ace (23) and Miko (17) desperately want to become famous actors but it seems the universe has a different plan for their lives.

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Best Editing:

Best Sound:

A lone stranger broadcasts fragments of life he has experienced from different time and space, hoping to make a connection and communicate with other beings of life. Like a time capsule, the documentary contains artifacts of the first Filipinos, a family, a political upheaval, and the existence / non-existence of God.

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Best Scoring:

Best Cinematography:

Best Screenplay:

One of the most popular films in the Philippines in 2019 is this coming of age anthology, which follows a group of high school classroom “cleaners.” As they tidy up, they discover the world is anything but clean. Emerging Director Glenn Barit says the art design for his first feature was inspired by high school textbooks, highlighters, and pens. The bright and fluorescent colors take us on a nostalgic journey to a time before the internet dominated the modern classroom. Barit describes the photocopied look he chose for the film, which they achieved by months of manually highlighting each frame, as symbolic of the repetitive products of a machine.

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Best Production Design:

Other Awards
Fernando Poe Jr. Memorial Award – Angel Locsin
German Moreno Youth Achievement Award – Liza Soberano and Matteo Guidicelli
Dolphy King of Comedy Award – Pokwang
Dr. Jose Vera Perez Memorial Award – Boy Abunda
Famas 2020 Advocacy Directing Award – Neil “Buboy” Tan
FAMAS Lifetime Achievement Awardees: Ricky Lee, Scriptwriting – Rox Lee, Alternative Cinema – Armida Siguion-Reyna, Industry Development