One of the biggest surprises from this year’s Cinemalaya run was the success of director Nigel Santos’ sapphic film Open Endings, which garnered enough viewers to become the independent film festival’s number one box office hit. Now, it’s slated for the QCinema International Film Festival happening this November.
One of the reasons it’s one of Cinemalaya’s most-watched films is its cast. The film follows a friend group of four exes played by actresses Jasmine Curtis-Smith, Janella Salvador, and Klea Pineda, and sees musician Leanne Mamonong step into her first lead role. Together, the group won the festival’s Best Ensemble Performance Award.
But Open Endings’ other huge selling point is just that Filipino audiences have been waiting for a sapphic story. “It’s a reminder that these stories matter,” says Santos of the film’s box office success.
The filmmakers say the story is very much grounded in personal experiences, and it makes for a viewing experience that hits close to home for its target audience. Screenwriter Keavy Eunice Vicente tells Rolling Stone Philippines that the characters Hannah, Mihan, Charlie, and Kit — who make up a barkada of ex-girlfriends and entanglements — were made up of “little fragments of real people I love and have learned from.”
In this interview with Rolling Stone Philippines, filmmakers Santos and Vicente discuss writing about four complicated characters, working with their four leads, and making the case for telling the stories of queer women in Philippine cinema.
In Open Endings, you juggled writing four lead characters with interwoven romantic histories. How did you map their emotional timelines on the page so each one felt distinct and earned?
Vicente: I spent a huge part of the pre-writing process just living with these characters. I had to imagine who they were beyond the script. I even built a whole Google Sheet that tracked everything from their character profiles to their relationship histories, their views on marriage, their coming out journeys, their flaws, and what each of them contributes to the friend group. It helped me see how their inner worlds might clash or complement one another once they were all in the same room.
These four characters, Hannah, Mihan, Charlie, and Kit, were also born from a mishmash of my friends’ personalities and worldviews, little fragments of real people I love and have learned from. Along the way, I had to keep reminding myself to stay honest, to let them be messy, contradictory, and human. I wasn’t aiming for perfect characters; I wanted them to feel whole, like people you could actually know.
The dialogue feels very authentic and lets ordinary moments carry weight. What was your process for finding the tone?
Vicente: My only rule when writing dialogue is that it has to sound like how people actually talk. If a line feels stiff or unnatural — if I can’t imagine someone really saying it — I change it right away.
“If Open Endings opened a small door for us, I’d like to help keep it open for others too.”
The title and ending gesture toward openness. When you wrote the ending, what did you hope viewers would take away?
Vicente: I wanted viewers to look inward, to examine their own hearts, dilemmas, and biases about how they believe this story should end. Or maybe to find comfort in the idea that there are no real endings unless we choose them. Life keeps moving, and love continues to exist, even through pain and heartbreak.
What was the biggest barrier you encountered getting Open Endings from script to screen?
Vicente: To be honest, the biggest challenge was getting into the Cinemalaya finals. It was such a long, rigorous process. We first had to pitch as part of the Top 30, then go through an intensive development workshop as part of the Top 20, before finally making it to the finals. Funding was another huge hurdle, but we pushed through.
What made it all possible was our team. We were lucky to have a passionate, women-led crew that we fondly called our “kababatas” and a cast that was incredibly generous. The set was filled with so much joy and love, it really felt like we were building something meaningful together.
Before this film, you worked on Pearl Next Door, which was a girl love series. What’s next to explore in the lane of sapphic stories?
Vicente: Even if I wrote ten more sapphic films, it still wouldn’t feel like enough. There’s such a deep hunger from audiences to see their own lives, desires, and complexities reflected on screen. I just hope producers and decision-makers recognize that sapphic stories do have an audience, and a passionate one at that. My dream is for the day when sapphic films are so common that their inclusion in a lineup isn’t treated like a milestone, but a norm.
“I hope Open Endings shows that queer women’s stories don’t have to be boxed in as niche, sad, or overexplained. They can be funny, soft, flawed, and still meaningful.”
You cast all four leads at once and focused on the chemistry between them from day one. Can you walk us through how that casting influenced your process, and whether any unexpected dynamics from those early rehearsals or readings reshaped the film?
Santos: From the start, I knew Open Endings would live or die by chemistry. The story isn’t driven by big twists but by how these four queer women, with their shared past and history, exist together. They’ve seen everything in each other, and that connection had to feel real. The group dynamic mattered most, so we did chemistry tests for all the shortlisted actors. The final stage of casting was when they acted together. We had them do improvisations to see how they naturally interacted.
Also during pre-prod, we had a character workshop that focused on how they talked, listened, and occupied space together. We did memory swaps and group exercises until they started mirroring each other’s energy. It made the film feel more real, more lived-in.
Open Endings avoids some of the familiar sapphic tropes like tragedy, punishment, or melodrama, and leans into ambiguity. How did you and Keavy negotiate the line between leaving things open and risking audience frustration?
Santos: From the start, the script was written to focus on the lives of four queer women as friends who were once exes. We decided early on that this wasn’t going to be about grand plot twists, but that doesn’t mean other queer films with those themes aren’t valid. It’s just that for us, we wanted to tell a kind of story we could really see ourselves in, something we haven’t quite seen on screen before.
After the Cinemalaya run and acclaim for the film and the ensemble, how do you think the film can shift expectations for queer women’s stories in both indie and commercial Philippine cinema? What would you like producers and festivals to do differently now?
Santos: I hope Open Endings shows that queer women’s stories don’t have to be boxed in as niche, sad, or overexplained. They can be funny, soft, flawed, and still meaningful. I just want producers and festivals to trust queer creators — especially women — to tell their own stories. We just want the same space other storytellers have; we don’t need to be treated like a separate category. Representation doesn’t have to come with a footnote.
“There’s such a deep hunger from audiences to see their own lives, desires, and complexities reflected on screen.”
Given Cinemalaya’s platform and the conversations the film has started, what are the other kinds of sapphic or lesbian stories you want to direct or help shepherd?
Santos: I want to see more stories where queer women simply exist: friendships, chosen families, everyday life. Also in other forms, not just film, but in series, plays, and even literature. I’m also interested in collaborating with fellow queer women, actors, writers, and filmmakers, to build a space where we can create freely, without having to justify our queerness. If Open Endings opened a small door for us, I’d like to help keep it open for others too.
Do you see Open Endings as part of a deliberate slate or movement, and if so how would you like to collaborate with other filmmakers and writers?
Santos: I believe it’s already part of something. Being named Cinemalaya’s number one blockbuster hit just proves there’s an audience that’s ready and waiting. It’s a reminder that these stories matter. I’ve always been a fan of queer sapphic films, especially those made by Filipino queer women. I’d watch them in cinemas, share them online, and cheer for the creators. So now that it’s our turn, it feels good to give back and keep that energy going.
We’re still learning, but that’s what makes it exciting. The more people we have creating and supporting these stories, the stronger the community becomes. For me, the next natural step is collaboration through writers’ rooms, small labs, or simply showing up for each other’s work. The movement grows not by branding it, but by building community.
