There’s a new mother-and-daughter creative team in Philippine movies, coming after Vivamax’s Len Carillo (mother, film producer) and Quinn Carillo (daughter, actor-scriptwriter). The new team is that of Catherine Camarillo (mother, producer-director) and Ellis Catrina (daughter, creative producer-scriptwriter).

The new team has nothing to do with Vivamax, but with an indie company known as Pocketmedia Productions. Their first output is the romantic film Chances Are You and I, headlined by what might become a mainstay screen loveteam between Kira Balinger and Kelvin Miranda. 

The film will start showing in theaters on 29 May with Regal Films as distributor. The movie is co-produced by Happy Infinite Productions.

Yes, Balinger is with ABS-CBN, while Miranda with GMA 7. Their team-up may be considered a casting coup even as they are not yet big stars like Kathryn Bernardo and Alden Richards when they were cast in ABS-CBN Star Cinema’s Hello Love Goodbye — a film that became Pinoy cinema’s highest box office grosser until Rewind, bannered by the real-life couple Marian Rivera and Dingdong Dantes came along late last year to break the record. (Oh, yes, Star Cinema produced Rewind, too, just like Hello Love Goodbye).

It’s probably sheer coincidence that the surnames “Carillo” and “Camarillo” sound almost exactly alike. But we can’t consider it sheer coincidence that the latter worked on a string of series and films for ABS-CBN as assistant director beginning 2009 all the way to 2021. 

Camarillo has been assistant director in such ABS-CBN series as Mara Clara (2009), May Bukas Pa (2010) and Wild Flower.

She started getting billed as full director on ABS-CBN in the entire series Hiyas in 2019, some episodes of Maalaala Mo Kaya in 2020, and in the youth seriesIin 2022.

Camarillo has also worked in the movies of Chito Roño and in Tanging Yaman, directed by Laurice Guillen, all for Star Cinema. 

She started producing and directing Chances Are You and I in 2020, but had to stop when the pandemic broke out full blast. She managed to resume filming in 2022 during which she shot major parts of the film in South Korea during the cold month of November.

At the press conference held at the Regal Events Venue in Quezon City, Camarillo’s daughter Ellis Catrina revealed that she started writing the script of Chances Are You and I when she was still in senior high school and completed it when she was already in college. She later showed the script to her mom who decided to produce and direct it.