MUMBAI: Filipino director, Raya Martin has dedicated the screening of Independencia at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) to two of his slain friends, Filipino-Canadian Alexis Tioseco and Slovenian Nika Bohinc.Martin‘s film, a black and white film in English and Tagalog (language spoken in the Philippines by around 22 million people) chronicles the colonial occupation of the Philippines. The tragic tale revolves around three generations of a family and is in the classic style of Filipino melodrama, with an emphasis of folklore.

The mourning Martin will not attend the festival and will remain in Manila to mourn the loss of his friends.

Tioseco, a regular faculty member of the arts department of the University of Asia and the Pacific, was a regular contributor for men‘s magazine UNO and had written for top newspapers including the Philippine Daily Inquirer and the Philippine Star. Bohinc was editor-in-chief of Ekran film magazine and a known personality in Slovenia.