With the seemingly unquestionable box office triumph of Hello, Love, Again, a number of movie fans are most likely now wishing that its lead actors, Kathryn Bernardo and Alden Richards, become sweethearts for real. But almost as surely, there are showbiz followers who do not nourish that wish. A real romance between Bernardo and Richards can affect their respective careers, each may be said to be at its highest point so far. Intertwining their real lives with their showbiz careers can lead to complications that can wear them out with so many other relationships they have to deal with and sustain for their wellbeing.

We have in Bernardo and Richards possibly the most wholesome and most decent showbiz idols. They are not known to have “secret” vices as many superstars in the country had in the past. They were secretly either into drugs or into alcohol even if they were into amorous relationships with someone who wasn’t their on-screen sweetheart.

We personally do not wish Bernardo and Richards to become sweethearts in real life. But we don’t also wish Bernardo to reunite with ex-boyfriend Daniel Padilla. They seem to have learned to be happy and well without each other and it may be the best for them. Padilla is reported in ABS-CBN press releases to be doing very well in the tapings of a series which he top-bills with a very prominent support cast.

2025 CinePanalo Film Festival

What we wish for Bernardo and Richards is for each of them to do a film for the quite young CinePanalo film festival within the next few years to boost the appeal of the country’s most positive and most wholesome film festival.

The world is stuck in the belief that only narratives that have darkness, injustice, doomed failure and unjust deaths make engrossing films that viewers will swarm. In the Philippines, only CinePanalo has begun to assert that stories of people who don’t get entangled with greed, carnal pleasures, influential beings who are perverts of one kind or another are also quite interesting. 

CinePanalo’s festival director Chris Cahilig recently stressed that they welcome films in all genres presented positively and wholesomely.

Intoned Cahilig: “The genres include comedy, drama, romance, historical, sports and action, animation, musical, science fiction, adventure and even documentary. However, the selection committee will automatically reject concepts in the horror, fantasy, sex and suspense genres.”