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Filipino actress Jaclyn Jose won Best Actress for her role in
"Ma' Rosa", a brutal dive into the Manila underworld directed by
Brillante Mendoza.
"It will strengthen the fight," Senator Vicente Sotto III, who
used to head the policymaking Dangerous Drugs Board under the
Office of the president, told Reuters.
"It's not only coincidental, but it's providential," said Dante
Jimenez, head of Volunteers Against Crime and Corruption, of
Jose's win in a film that tackles drugs and how to eradicate
them.
Set in Manila's slums, "Ma' Rosa" tells the story of Rosa Reyes,
portrayed by the 52-year-old Jose, who owns a small store and
sells drugs with her husband to make ends meet.
Both are detained at a police station after their home is
raided, leaving their three children to find the money needed to
pay off corrupt police officers in order to free their parents.
It was the first acting honor for the Philippines at Cannes, and
also the first international win for Jose. Mendoza, 55, won the
Best Director award at Cannes in 2009 for "Kinatay".
Jose's victory comes weeks before Duterte is sworn as the
Philippines' 16th president. Duterte, who vowed to crush crime,
corruption and drug abuse, has a huge lead over his rivals in an
unofficial vote count by an election commission-accredited
watchdog of the May 9 election.
Citing a government report, Jimenez, whose own brother was
killed by a drug syndicate in 1990, said 93 percent of the
Philippines' 42,000 villages were "drug-infested".
Duterte, who is pushing to reimpose the death penalty by
hanging, promised to wipe out drugs and criminality within six
months of taking office.
Duterte's often outrageous comments have won him huge support
and his tirades about killing criminals and a joke about a
murdered rape victim do not appear to have dented his popularity
in the largely Roman Catholic country.
(Reporting by Manolo Serapio Jr. and Neil Jerome Morales;
Editing by Nick Macfie)
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