At the Center for Asian American Media website, Chuleenan Svetvilas has interviewed Neill Dela Llana and Ian Gamazon, the directors of CAVITE, which opens theatrically June 16 in San Francisco and San Diego. Here's an excerpt:

CS: How did you get the idea for CAVITE?

NDL: Around the summer of 2001, Ian was living in LA and I was in San Diego and we were saving money by talking on our cell phones during the free nights and weekends. We had a conversation where we just had one of those “what if” questions: “What if somebody kidnapped you and the kidnapper forced me to save you?” And it was just like, “Bing!” that’s a movie. But the most important thing was that it was a movie that could be done cheaply.

IG: We were going to have the film take place in LA or San Diego but then we realized, you know what? Let’s go to the Philippines. So we researched what was going on the Philippines--the Muslim-Christian conflict there.