Januel mercado

Interview: Forgotten Island directors Januel Mercado and Joel Crawford on the heart of their film; “We want you to call your best friend.”

Growing older has a way of revealing which friendships were chapters and which became part of the entire story. Or, as Forgotten Island co-director Januel Mercado rather wonderfully puts it, perhaps we’re not getting old so much as we’ve simply “been younger, longer.” That perspective feels particularly fitting for DreamWorks Animation’s latest original adventure, a…

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Film Review: Forgotten Island is a wonderfully weird, culturally rich and unexpectedly moving adventure

DreamWorks has been enjoying something of a creative renaissance in recent years, but even with the studio increasingly willing to push its visual language, Forgotten Island feels like a particularly special swing. Vibrant, wonderfully strange and ultimately far more emotional than its chaotic adventure initially suggests, Joel Crawford and Januel Mercado’s Filipino mythology-inspired feature takes…

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