You won’t believe how I met former OFW Esperanza Tresvalles from Bato, Catanduanes.

            In 1992, I was overseeing this outreach concert in Bato town parish center by the lake beside a historic church that dated back to the 1830s.

            On the night of the concert, I was surprised by an unusual concertgoer.

            In her summer rag-tag attire and with some wild flowers on her hair, Esperanza was quite a sight. She took the back row of the hall and listened attentively as the Handel and Verdi arias reverberated in the hall.

            While soprano Luz Morete -- with Najib Ismail on the piano --  was singing Sisa’s aria (from Felipe Padilla de Leon’s Noli Me Tangere), I saw Esperanza rapt in attention. Her hands were on her lap and she looked like an African royalty in a command performance.

            Little did I know that she was the island’s modern-day Sisa.

             The  film director  -- who is behind the  Tanging Ina  blockbusters  and  who just pulled off another box office triumph in “Moron 5 and The Crying Lady” -- can actually relate to the material out of which emerged the movie goldmine of the decade.

            “My father left the family when I was only six months old and I grew up with the image of my mother who worked hard to send five children to school on her own. I was the youngest. Everytime we were shooting a scene from Tanging Ina, I felt the presence of my mother in it. Doon ko talaga hinugot sa mother ko ang character ng Tanging Ina. I grew up without a father and didn’t miss having one. Be that as it may, I’d say I did have a happy childhood. Now I am having a hard time doing a story revolving around fathers. If you notice, the male characters in my soap operas are the weak kind. Probably because I didn’t have a model of a strong father in real life.”