Synopsis: Julia Cuevas is a Filipino-Australian medical doctor who lives in Melbourne, Australia. Her parents, both were also doctors in the Health Service Program established by the revolutionary movement to provide medical assistance to the people in rural communities. Unfortunately, her parents were kidnapped, tortured, and killed by a state-formed paramilitary troop. Julia learns about the death of her parents when the movement’s branch in Australia contacts her. She then decides to go to Mindanao to retrieve the remains of her parents. Accompanied by four guerillas who used to be part of her parents’ collective, she journeys through the thick forests of Mindanao setting out to take her parents back to Australia, and immersing herself in the living revolution of her parents and Filipino people.
Film Title: Cuchera | Director: Joseph Israel Laban | Language: English & Filipino (with English subtitles) | Availability: Worldwide
Synopsis: Based on a true story, Cuchera is about Filipino drug mules, drug couriers and their recruiters. It follows the story of Isabel, a veteran drug mule, in her first attempt at running her own drug transshipment operation between Manila and China. Isabel’s character is based on the story of an actual Filipina drug mule who was caught with eight capsules of heroin lodged in her sex organ, 48 in the rectum and 11 in her abdomen after an x-ray was conducted by Chinese authorities. Cuchera presents an accurate depiction of how some Filipinos end up becoming entrenched in the world of illegal drugs. Currently, the Philippines leads all Southeast Asian countries in the number of nationals arrested for drug smuggling charges in China. As of February 2011, there are 79 Filipinos with death penalty cases still languishing in various jails in Chinese territories for smuggling drugs into the country. All in all, there are 691 Filipinos worldwide incarcerated for the same crime. Violators include women and minors who enter China with fake
Film Title: Dog Days | Director: Timmy Harn | Language: Filipino (with English subtitles) | Availability: Philippine Territory only
Synopsis: Dog Days follow the agony of being Michael Jordan Ulili, a teenager without family, a basketball superstar without a team. As he uncovers the myth of his destiny, he speeds into his own road to ruin, a dark path where crystal meth and blood magic ultimately test his capability to sustain a life that he doesn’t know what to do with.
Film Title: Genus, Pan (Lahi, Hayop) | Director: Lav Diaz | Language: Filipino (with English subtitles) | Availability: Worldwide
Synopsis: Three illegal miners journey back to their island after months of toiling in hellish conditions. With their hard-earned money, they traversed the sea, the mountains and the forest until they reached their destination. Or did they really reach their cursed place?
Film Title: Ang mga Kidnapper ni Ronnie Lazaro | Director: Sigfreid Barros Sanchez | Language: Filipino (with English subtitles) | Availability: Worldwide
Synopsis: HOW to make an indie film? BEBOT, a former Overseas Filipino Worker (OFW) has been down and out of luck after the Middle East crisis, that left him jobless and his family leaving him in the process. He hatches a plan with his loser friends from Quiapo — PIPOY, a call center agent; BOY GEORGE, a camera repairman; ABDUL, a Muslim pirated DVD seller; HESUS, a prophet of doom; and HECTOR, a former stuntman who has grown fat because of the demise of action films — to make an independent film of their own starring what to them is the most famous Filipino indie film actor nowadays especially with the sudden boom of indie films — RONNIE LAZARO. However, things became complicated when RONNIE LAZARO decides to beg off from acting on their supposed indie film. They suddenly found themselves accidentally kidnapping RONNIE and holing him up at BEBOT’s old dilapidated place in Quiapo. What will happen now that they have the most famous indie actor in the Philippines? Will they be able to finish their film on time? Or will other filmmakers finish theirs in time without a Ronnie Lazaro?
Film Title: Lasponggols | Director: Sigfreid Barros Sanchez | Language: Filipino (with English subtitles) | Availability: Worldwide
Synopsis: Lasponggols is a black comedy that focuses on two filmmakers, Raffy, the clapper, and Dido, a utility boy. Both share the same dream: to direct their own films someday. Their lives as mere “small production people,” take a different turn when, together with the people in the unit van they are riding, have an encounter with armed men. Their co-workers get killed and they end up in a secluded barrio not yet reached by modern technology and, therefore, the townsfolk know nothing of the movie industry. The two pretend to be famous directors; Erik Matti and John Red, and tell the people that they are looking for actors for the movie they are going to shoot. This makes the barrio people enthusiastic until everyone—from the village idiot to the village head—insists to be included in the supposed “film.” The barrio suddenly becomes a “microcosm” of the film industry.
Synopsis: Two aging couple who work in the Filipino film industry; a linear editor and a former dubber, who, at the twilight of their lives, decide to part ways to know what’s missing in their lives. They both explore things they haven’t explored before as they both undergo a sexual awakening in their lives. The wife finds comfort in a local school janitor whom she sees a slight parallelism to her life. On the other hand, the husband gets enamored with a shy barrio lass whose face elicits the same weakness he has for women with chinita eyes.
Film Title: Nuwebe | Director: Joseph Israel Laban | Language: Filipino (with English subtitles) | Availability: Worldwide
Synopsis: Inspired by the true story of one of the youngest mothers in the history of the Philippines. Krista was only 9 years old when she became pregnant. Her mother believes that she was impregnated by evil supernatural creatures called nuno sa punso but the real story is more complicated than it seems.
Film Title: Pink Halo-Halo | Director: Joselito ‘Jay’ Atarejos | Language: Filipino (with English subtitles) | Availability: Worldwide
Synopsis: Natoy is just like any other child. He finds joy and excitement in the simplest of things — especially in eating halo-halo filled with pink gelatin and red sago at the local halo-halo store owned by his godmother, Bing; and playing with his uncle, Mating. Things change suddenly when, as he and his mother Sonia are watching television, a news report about the ongoing war in Mindanao (southern part of the Philippines) shows footage of a badly wounded soldier waiting for rescue. That soldier — almost bleeding to death, is his father, Corporal Lino Bolante. As far away as the war, this story does not just show how the war in Mindanao robs a child of his innocence, but also shows the shadows of the wars that Filipino homes confront
Film Title: Pisay (Philippine Science High School) | Director: Kanakan Balintagos (Auraeus Solito) | Language: Filipino (with English subtitles) | Availability: Worldwide
Synopsis: Amidst the chaos of Martial Law in this Third World country in the 1980s, six teenagers in the top high school for the sciences discover themselves as they go through the joys and pains of adolescence. They were the top two hundred students from all over the Philippines who passed the examination for the Philippine Science High School, which was created for the purpose of giving an education highly enriched in the Sciences to exceptionally gifted Filipino children. Selected from the best and brightest from all over the country, they endure college-level courses in biology, chemistry, mathematics, and physics from their sophomore year onwards. Those who can make it are hailed as the future science and technology leaders of the New Republic, those who don’t are deemed unfortunate victims of natural selection. They all learn however that they are neither isolated from the real world nor are they exempted from living real lives.
Synopsis: Baskets of fruit mysteriously appear by Fe’s front yard each morning. Thinking that it was a reconciliatory gesture from her abusive husband, Dante, Fe tells him about it. But this only confirms Dante’s suspicions that she might be entertaining a lover while he is away at work. Fearing her husband’s jealousy, Fe grows even more scared as the baskets of fruit kept coming, a step closer to the front door each day. She also notices that the baskets only come bearing black fruits. Fe keeps everything to herself until another man, Arturo, catches her attention. Fe immediately confronts Arturo, a former suitor, now her husband’s employer as the sole proprietor of a household industry for rattan furniture. Instead of finding answers, however, she ends up rekindling her affair with Arturo, who never married after she left him being ten years her prime. Thinking that it is Arturo who courts her with the baskets of black fruit, Fe looks at him as her way out of her abusive relationship with Dante. But when Fe urges Arturo to elope, Fe finds out that the young man now has far more binding commitments with his family. Caught between an abusive husband and an impotent lover, Fe discovers the possibility that it was a kapre, a tree ogre in the local lore, who has been courting her all along with the baskets of black fruit. She has to choose whether to elope with the man that is the kapre who could very well be just a figment of her imagination, answering her need for emancipation, or stay trapped with the men in her real life who could never protect her nor make her happy.
Film Title: Rigodon | Diretors: Sari Dalena & Keith Sicat | Language: English Filipino (with English subtitles) | Availability: Worldwide
Synopsis: The American Dream is an Immigrant’s Nightmare. Immediately after the 9/11 attacks, US authorities begin their crackdown on migrant communities. Dante, the intellectual who is trying to help supply aging boxer Amado false documents while Salome, a war bride yearns for home; these three Filipinos try to survive in a paranoid New York City.
PANORMA ASIA SECTION(Asian Films)
Film Title: ROH (Soul) | Director: Emir Ezwan | Language: Malay (with English subtitles) Availability: Worldwide
Synopsis: Set in the unspecified past during wartime, a family is spooked by the arrival of a mysterious and sinister young guest; who in the family will survive?
Film Title: Eriko, Pretended | Director: Akiyo Fujimura | Language: Japanese (with English subtitles) | Availability: Worldwide
Synopsis: Ten years have gone by since Eriko moved to Tokyo to pursue her dream of becoming an actress. However, things haven’t gone as she expected and for Eriko, there was no hope in sight. She receives the news about her sister’s funeral and barely manages to deliver a eulogy. Her relatives question Eriko’s pretended life as a successful actress. On a whim, Eriko declares that she will take care of Kazuma, her sister’s 10-year old son while finding out that her sister used to work as a mourner-for-hire at funerals.
Synopsis: This film is composed of black and white images from the somber depths of Manila’s Sta. Mesa district, which are juxtaposed in the railroad system that metaphorically connects the lives of each individual in the community. Captured by a single camera and a keen eye, each moving picture is accompanied by stories of grief, misery, hope and inspiration.
Synopsis: An Elegy to Forgetting documents a filmmaker’s experience with his father’s death due to Alzheimer’s disease. Taken from a personal perspective, the filmmaker gives a first-hand look at how his family dealt with his father’s worsening Alzheimer’s disease and eventual death, leading him to realizations about memory, familial relationships, and his own mortality. The film delves into the importance of memories in the human experience – how the ability to remember makes us feel alive, how its power can hold us, and how memory gives us what we need to feel and be human.
Synopsis: Four families live in the seams of Manila’s busiest international port. They are migrants from the Philippine countryside who have ended up among the bottom quarter of Manila’s population. In the hours of their ordinary days, they hear and see, the wealth of different nations packed as cargo, passing them by, leaving and entering Manila’s shores. Anne gives birth to her third child. Akira learns reading and writing while foraging for scrap metal and coal. Eddie entertains himself to sleep with a broken TV before another nightshift work as a stevedore in the port. Emelita prays over the funeral of her husband. Around them and their days, the port is slowly expanding. Anne’s midwife, Paning, brings the news. In the Claws of a Century Wanting is a filmic symphony depicting the increasing everyday violence in the aspiration for a city fit for globalization. It captures a global process from the perspective of everyday life. In the every day of four small homes, the film traces imprints of the larger world.
Film Title: Timbre | Language: Filipino (with English subtitles) | Availability: Worldwide
Synopsis: Ever since the Duterte administration rose to power, nightly killings have terrorized the Philippines in an all-out government-endorsed war on drugs campaign. This documentary follows the plight of a family who recently lost a loved one in this war, offering a stark personal perspective on the current political crisis in the Philippines.
BAHAGHARI ENCOUNTERS SECTION (LGBTQI+ Stories)
Film Title: Censored Dreams | Director: Joselito ‘Jay’ Altarejos | Language: Filipino (with English subtitles) | Availability: Worldwide
Synopsis: Censored Dreams is an insightful look into independent filmmaking in the Philippines in the early 2000s. The film takes us through the process of making a gay film through the eyes of an aspiring actor, SAMUEL (Arjay Carreon) and struggling filmmaker, WILFREDO (Richard Quan), a flighty businessman-turned-producer, BONG (MON CONFIADO), an idealistic production assistant, MARC (Mark Fabillar). Samuel puts all his dreams into becoming an actor in the film by doing everything he could, and Wilfredo gives his all to finish the film because his livelihood depends on it. But their hope is dashed when the Board of Censors gives an X-Rating to the film which means that it is banned from being shown publicly. Censored Dreams humanizes and shows the struggle and sacrifices of the people involved in a small film.
Film Title: Memories of Forgetting | Director: Joselito ‘Jay’ Altarejos | Language: Filipino (with English subtitles) | Availability: Worldwide
Synopsis: Memories of Forgetting chronicles the reunion of an older man and a younger man whose unspoken, special relationship was ruined five years ago by an allegation of abuse. Will the truth and love prevail this time or will fate play with them again? The film is an expressionistic take on gay love using, words, music, and imagery. It tackles a kind of relationship between two consenting individuals that are unspoken, and sometimes unacknowledged. JIM, 30s, is a filmmaker who had an unacknowledged special relationship with MICHAEL, 20s, an actor he worked with five years ago. In the midst of shooting a film, Michael quit the project leaving a trail of gossip on the real reason for leaving. While Metro Manila is in lockdown, the two meet again. The meeting is cordial, friendly. But once they get to Jim’s apartment, their dynamics become volatile, fighting at some point and making love the next moment. The couple drinks, smokes weed, dances, talks, and faces the inevitable- the question of harassment. Once again, answers are just implied through actions. And a better relationship seems to be in the offing. But Jim’s mother, YVONNE, dies and ‘gets in the way.’ Once again, their relationship is halted. After some time, at a wedding, Jim and Michael meet again. Will they finally seize the chance to realize their protracted relationship?
Film Title: The Game of Juan’s Life | Director: Joselito ‘Jay’ Altarejos | Language: Filipino (with English subtitles) | Availability: Worldwide
Synopsis: The Game of Juan’s Life explores two hours in the life of 25 year old Masbate native Juan Reyes (Ray An Dulay), a live sex performer in an underground gay bar in Manila. He has decided to leave his past behind, and in doing, so takes us with him as he makes life decisions, big and small — his emotional goodbyes with his lover, Noel (Nico Antonio); and his last performance marred by a raid by the authorities which changes his resolve.
Film Title: The Commitment (Kasal) | Director: Joselito ‘Jay’ Altarejos | Language: Filipino (with English subtitles) | Availability: Worldwide
Synopsis: Paolo is a filmmaker and Sherwin is a lawyer. They have been together for three years. The first year of their relationship have been a bliss until Paolo commits infidelity on their second year. The affair almost ended their relationship. But, the couple has tried hard to patch things up and has decided to move on and be together. Six months after the incident, the couple is still recovering from the incident. On this weekend, Paolo and Sherwin are attending the wedding of the latter’s only sister in Batangas. Wedding, as we all know, symbolizes love and commitment. But for the gay couple, this event will test their relationship once again. On their journey to the province, Sherwin remembers the hurt that the infidelity has caused them. A violent fight ensues. Starting the tension once again. This tension is carried over to Sherwin’s house. Sherwin does not seem to know how to handle Paolo’s presence in their house while Paolo tries to be friendly with everyone. Sherwin sometimes ignores his partner’s presence and even fails to introduce him properly, thus, hurting Paolo’s feelings. Meanwhile, Paolo gets along well with Sherwin’s male cousin making Sherwin feel a pang of jealousy. During the reception, Celia, Sherwin’s mother, surprises her son by announcing that Sherwin has been awarded a scholarship abroad and is leaving soon. Sherwin has kept this matter hidden from Paolo. Feeling betrayed, Paolo erupts. A confrontation follows. Old wounds are revisited. Pain and feeling of betrayal resurface. On a rainy Sunday morning, the couple drives back to Manila. They are pensive. Each is lost in his thoughts. Will the couple survive, yet, another test in their relationship?
Film Title: Tale of the Lost Boys | Director: Joselito ‘Jay’ Altarejos | Language: Filipino, English, Mandarin (with English subtitles) | Availability: Worldwide
Synopsis: The film is the story of the friendship between two men — Alex, a Filipino mechanic, and Jerry, a Taiwanese aborigine student. The two meet randomly when Alex flees to Taipei from Manila, after leaving his girlfriend pregnant. A casual conversation develops into a surprising personal connection between them. Both realize that they yearn for a more intimate connection with their mothers, since Alex’s abandoned him for a new family while Jerry is afraid that his traditional parents will reject him for being gay. The two men go on a road trip and end up at Jerry’s tribe. The trip eventually makes them reconnect with their mothers and both discover a certain sense of identity and freedom.
Film Title: Intercourse of Words | Director: Cha Roque | Language English | Availability: Worldwide
Synopsis: This intimate piece features clips of the filmmaker and her partner as they are making love. Backed with sensual music and poetry narration, this collaborative piece aims to prove that poetry can touch someone where hands couldn’t. Intercourse of Words is part of Cha Roque’s PeliTula project. PeliTula comes from the Filipino words pelikula (film), and tula (poetry). This project aims to present poetry through filming of words; through the combination of visual images and narrated poems that will make the viewer sit and open himself to the experience. It is putting together two elements that would provide the viewer a full meal, from the power of text, to the spark of imagination, to visual connections and metaphors. Film is a visual art form and poetry is more on the abstract world of thought and feeling rather than the literal world of things. PeliTula takes on the marriage of the two as an art form.
Synopsis: Marching On tells the story of Bishop Richard Mickley who is one of the organizers of the first pride march in the Philippines which is also the first in Asia. The film reflects on the early days of the LGBTQI+ advocacy in the country and the continuous fight of the Filipino LGBTQI+ community for acceptance and equality. Marching On is part of the Before Rainbows series produced by the Philippine LGBT Chamber of Commerce and Embassy of the Netherlands in the Philippines.
Film Title: Slay | Director: Cha Roque | Language: Filipino (with English subtitles) | Availability: Worldwide
Synopsis: Slay features the story of Floyd Scott Tiogangco, a homosexual trans-androgynous gender-queer Filipino performance artist. He is often judged and denied entry to public vehicles and establishments just because of his unique sense of style. This documentary explores how gender expression is also grounds for discrimination in the Philippines, and how the idea of sexual orientation often comes with a boxed expectation of how a person’s gender expression should be.
Synopsis: What I Would Have Told My Daughter If I Knew What To Say Back Then features the filmmaker talking to over 13 years of home videos in an imagined conversation with her daughter’s younger years. The filmmaker’s failed coming out when her child was only 3 years old inspired the initial concept for this experimental documentary.
Film Title: Bullet-Laced Dreams | Director: Kristoffer Brugada & Cha Escala | Language: Filipino, Visayan (with English subtitles) | Availability: Worldwide
Synopsis: Bullet-Laced Dreams follows 14-year old Chricelyn Empong and the indigenous Lumad children as they defend their right to education in Mindanao, the southernmost island of the Philippines. Incessant armed conflicts between the Duterte-led government and communist rebels pushed these kids to transfer from place to place just to continue their schooling. Chricelyn and her classmates end up in the capital city of Manila, where they pursue their studies and at the same time protest for the end of martial law so they can go back to their ancestral home. The conflicts separate Chricelyn from her family, but despite facing hardship, displacement and tragedy, she vows to fight for her indigenous way of life and right to an education.
Film Title: If You Leave | Director: Dodo Dayao | Language: English, Filipino (with English subtitles) | Availability: Worldwide
Synopsis: Two amateur ghost hunters are hired to surveil an alleged haunted house. Nothing much happens. But just because you can’t see the patterns of strangeness, it doesn’t mean they aren’t there.
Film Title: Tila | Director: Rob Jara | Language: Filipino (with English subtitles) | Availability: Worldwide
Synopsis: In a world where the rain never stops, illegal multivitamin supplements are all the rage and ‘bulalo’ is a most precious commodity, two people – a flood control worker and a call center agent who sells summer vacation packages abroad – meet and find a sense of intimate normalcy and unfamiliar ease in each other.
Film Title: Tokwifi | Director: Carla Pulido ocampo | Language: Filipino, English, Finontok (with English subtitles) | Availability: Worldwide
Synopsis: As Limmayug carries firewood back to his home village, something falls from the sky: a 1950s television, with a hysterical showbiz star trapped inside it. She is Laura Blancaflor. The frightened man saves the television — nay, saves Laura — from the flames of the impact. Worlds apart in their language and methods, the two try their best to engage each other. But for the sensibilities of Limmayug, a citizen of an off-the-grid mountain town, Laura’s TV talk seems too contrived — and alas, during commercial breaks, uncontrollably tactless, too.
Synopsis: Amidst the social and political struggles of the “Bagong Lipunan” era, Red grows up with his middle-class family as an ordinary boy. He then finds himself caught between the conflicts brought by his mother’s unbending ideologies, and his father’s apolitical instinct to protect his family.
Film Title: Maliw | Director: Rob Jara | Language: Filipino (with English subtitles) | Availability: Worldwide
Synopsis: A young woman revisiting memories of a lost love days before Martial Law is proclaimed — an old, jaded mechanic — a young man on his way to the countryside encountering a host of militiamen and their tortured captive — these are stories of forgotten hopes, of wearied struggles, of memories lost. Can they still be ever found?
Film Title: Paano Bihisan ang Isang Ina? | Director: Tim Rone Villanueva | Language: Filipino (with English subtitles) | Availability: Worldwide
Synopsis: Klaudia, a “live show” performer in a whore-house, was rented by Javier, a 12-year old millionaire, to be his mother for a week. Hesitant at first, Klaudia learns to adapt Javier in her world but everything suddenly change when Javier awakes the ghost of Klaudia’s dark past. Could Javier save Klaudia from the monster of her world? Could their mock-up relationship prove that love can set anyone free?
Film Title: Santa Nena | Director: Tim Rone Villanueva | Language: Filipino (with English subtitles) | Availability: Worldwide
Synopsis: Santa Nena, a patron saint statue in a parish church that springs to life every night, has to be the child-bearer for the second coming of the Messiah on earth with Manuel, the chosen boy with miraculous glowing balls, but what happens if she suddenly falls in love with the chosen boy even if God forbids her?
Film Title: Taya | Director: Adi Bontuyan | Language: Filipino | Availability: Worldwide
Synopsis: A 12-year-old boy learns to play traditional Filipino games through a new set of friends, who will show him that life and their games have many things in common.
Virtual Ticket Price: 220Php (per film / short film set)
