Not Just a Cartoon: ‘Sana’y Nandito Ka’ reimagines family drama through Filipino 3D animation
SINEGANG.ph published this press release by Archipelago Chanoma Studios. No staff writer participated in writing this article.
Animation continues to find new ways of telling stories about the Filipino experience. Moving beyond the familiar worlds of fantasy and children's entertainment, filmmaker Clister Santos brings an intimate family drama to life through his latest 3D animated short film, Sana’y Nandito Ka. The 21-minute short follows 24-year-old Kyle, who spends an afternoon with his mother, Loren, after nearly six years of being apart. What begins as an attempt to reconnect gradually becomes an encounter with the lives they have built separately. Rather than presenting a conventional reunion or an uncomplicated story of forgiveness, Sana’y Nandito Ka explores the difficult space between love, distance, and acceptance. It asks what happens when someone who once knew us better than anyone becomes a person we must learn to know all over again.
Turning Personal Distance Into an Animated Story
The story draws from Santos's personal experience of growing apart from his own mother, who moved to the province when he was in senior high school. She missed his graduation, not because she did not care, but because she was finally building a life that made her happy. “I’m not making this film to resolve anything. I’m making it because I think there are a lot of us who hug our mothers back a little too late. We deserve to see that on screen,” Santos shares. For Santos, animation became a way to give weight to the ordinary moments that often define relationships. Through 3D animation, the film gives attention to everyday experiences such as waiting at bus stations, sharing inexpensive meals, navigating awkward silences, and finding small reasons to laugh together. These seemingly unremarkable moments become the emotional language through which Kyle and Loren attempt to reconnect.
Reimagining Filipino Storytelling Through 3D Animation
The film also adopts a performance-driven approach to animation, featuring actors Zaijian Jaranilla and Meryll Soriano. Their dialogue performances were recorded in a sound studio, with the animation team studying their expressions, gestures, and movements frame by frame before translating them into 3D characters. The film was hand-animated over three months using Blender. An animator-turnedfilmmaker, Santos has previously worked on several animation projects, including RocketSheep Studio's Zaturnnah, where he served as a key animator, and Carl Papa's 58th and Patay Gutom as a rotoscope animator. His thesis film, Ili-Ili, received multiple distinctions, including First Place in Animation at the Cultural Center of the Philippines' Gawad Alternatibo. He was also named among the country's top creatives by Campaign Brief Asia. A QC Shorts grantee, Sana’y Nandito Ka will be screened from November 13–22, 2026 in select cinemas in Quezon City.
