Jose Lorenzo "Pepe" Diokno III (born August 13, 1987) is a Filipino film director, producer, and screenwriter. His debut film, Engkwentro premiered at the 2009 Venice Film Festival and received the Lion of the Future ("Luigi de Laurentiis") Award for Best Debut Film, as well as the Orizzonti Prize. He has since produced feature films, including Above the Clouds and Kapatiran. Early life and career Diokno was born in Manila, the first of six children of Chel Diokno, a lawyer and the founding dean of the De La Salle University (DLSU) College of Law, and Divina Aromin, a writer. He was named after his grandfather, the late Philippine senator and freedom fighter, Jose W. Diokno, the father of human rights and founder of the Free Legal Assistance Group (FLAG), who died six months before he was born. Pepe's great-great-grandfather is Gen. Ananías Diokno, leader of the Visayan forces during the 1896 Revolution and war against the United States. Diokno attended La Salle Green Hills for grade school and high school, and the University of the Philippines to take up a bachelor's degree in film. In 2006, at 17 years old, Diokno made his first short film, an eight-minute dark comedy entitled No Passport Needed. The film was a finalist at the second Cinemalaya Independent Film Festival. This was followed in 2008, by a short documentary entitled Dancing For Discipline, which tells the story of the dancing inmates at the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center. The documentary was produced by Rock Ed Philippines and The Asia Foundation and enabled Diokno to visit detention facilities around the Philippines. It was at one such facility, in Davao City, that he met two brothers that would inspire his first feature film. Career Film In 2009, at 21-years-old and still a student at the University of the Philippines, Diokno made his debut feature, Engkwentro. Produced on a meager budget, it tells the story of two teenage brothers on the run from a vigilante death squad, while throughout the film, the omnipresent voice of an iron-fisted mayor blasts on. The film premiered at the 2009 Cinemalaya Independent Film Festival, and was then selected to the 2009 Venice Film Festival, where it received the Lion of the Future - "Luigi de Laurentiis" Award for Best Debut Film, as well as the Orizzonti Prize for new trends in cinema. It also received the NETPAC Award for Best