Years after mining operations began, a once rugged and undisturbed town changed drastically. Koi, a fresh graduate in his early 20s, returns home with a left ear infection after more than two years of being away. Koi accompanies his mother Tonet in waiting for the former’s father, both of them clueless as to whether he could make it home alive after an accident in the extraction tunnel.
Joanne Cesario is a Filipina short filmmaker and zine creator. She grew up in Tanauan, Batangas and moved to Metro Manila at age 15. Before deciding to enter the Film program of the University of the Philippines, she first became a student activist and organizer. Both her childhood experiences and political undertakings have largely influenced her work. She melds personal and collective histories and memories in addressing matters such as labor, female identity, and ever-shifting landscapes both natural and beyond. She often approaches them through a magical and dreamlike lens.
The population has been struck with a widespread virus that causes a delay of sight from sound. Angela, a retiring special operations hitman, must honor one last mission: eliminate BH, the city’s biggest supplier of spid, a potent drug that briefly fixes one’s senses. As Angela hunts her way deeper into the night, she is led into a surreal bombardment of her senses: a dissonance that even spid can’t sync.
Alejo Barbaza is a filmmaker who takes interest in scriptwriting and sound. He graduated from the University of the Philippines Film Institute.
Mervine Aquino is a filmmaker and writer from Baguio City, and is a recent graduate of the University of the Philippines Film Institute. He has made several short films including “Interlude (Are you having fun?)” and “Baguio Address No. 10”, and also worked as editor several feature length films.
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 Limmayug, a citizen of an off-the-grid mountain town, Laura’s TV talk seems too contrived and, alas, during commercial breaks, uncontrollably tactless as well.
Carla Pulido Ocampo is an editor, screenwriter, and documentary filmmaker. She started out in film by composing theme songs and guitar-based scores for her classmates’ shorts, at the then Film Department of the College of Mass Communication, University of the Philippines – Diliman, where she graduated cum laude in 2005.
Currently, she is best known as the writer of the documentary film Walang Rape sa Bontok (international title: Bontok, Rapeless) which won the Gawad Urian award for Best Documentary in the year 2015, and which was shown in the Festival Internacional Signos da Noite in Portugal for two consecutive years (2016 and 2017).
Cleaners is a coming-of-age anthology film about high school classroom cleaners for the school year 2007-2008. Set in the backdrop of a Catholic school in Tuguegarao City, the characters deal with different pressures of being clean, proper and pure while slowly discovering that the world is dirty and superficial to begin with. The different stories range from the taboo of shitting in school to navigating local political dynasties.
Glenn Barit is a Filipino filmmaker, sound designer and scorer from Tuguegarao City, Cagayan. He likes to play around with his works because filmmaking is very hard and expensive.
His film “Aliens Ata” won him the NETPAC Jury Prize in the Cinemalaya Independent Film Festival 2017 and has screened in Kaohsiung Film Festival and SEA Shorts among others. “Cleaners”, his debut feature film, won Best Film, Best Screenplay and Audience Choice Award at QCinema IFF Asian Next Wave Section 2019 and has since screened in Busan IFF, Taipei Golden Horse FF and Torino FF among others.
English Title: The Girl and the Gun
The protagonist is a saleslady in a local department store. Her everyday life is composed of an exhausting commute home. She deals with the manager who always seems to have something to say about her physical state; her co-worker, Ted who is obviously interested in her but can’t take a hint; and from the catcallers near where she lives. When she finally gets home, there’s no one there but her roommate who couldn’t care less about her. All that is about to change when she reaches the gate to her boarding house and finds a peculiar looking gun right on her doorstep. Suddenly, she can do anything she wants, talk back to whoever she wants, and even hurt anyone she wants.
Rae Red is a screenwriter and filmmaker. She wrote the Philippine entry to the 90th Academy Awards, Birdshot (2017). Her short film, Luna (2016), was a finalist at the CineFilipino Film Festival Short Features category. Her first feature film, Si Chedeng at Si Apple is a finalist at the 2017 Cinema One Originals Film Festival. Si Chedeng at Si Apple has participated in the Far East Film Festival, Seattle International Film Festival, Frameline, Cinema Queer, Kansai Queer Film Festival, and Cinematografo. Babae at Baril is her first solo directorial film.
Arnel ‘Arbi’ Barbarona is a Davao-based film director and cinematographer, whose first full length film Tu Pug Imatuy (The Right to Kill) earned him Best Director awards from Gawad Urian and Famas in 2018 and Sinag Maynila Festival in 2017.
A product of the Mindanao Film Festival/ Guerilla Film Making, Barbarona collaborated with award-winning Mindanao directors (Arnel Mardoquio, Teng Mangansakan and Sheron Dayoc), earning him awards at Gawad Tanglaw 2014, Mindanao Film Festival 2015 and the Young Critics Circle Award 2013.
English Title: Enemy Within
Lieutenant Raiza Umali was assigned to a team protecting a mysterious businessman in hiding. When they subdue his attackers, a New People’s Army squad, she finds out one of its leaders, Ka Lai, resembles her.
Raiza learns they are protecting General Rapatan, an officer in hiding for the murder of activists. She questions her superiors, at the same time doubting her past. A DNA test shows Raiza and Lai are siblings. Her superior think of a mission to have Raiza switch places to infiltrate the NPA. But Raiza makes a choice with fatal consequences.
On the eve of the 2013 Zamboanga Siege, pregnant couple Elena and Nasser try to survive the devastatingly low yield of their flower farm, and raise money for the birth of their first child. Serendipitously, Nasser gets invited to a peace rally in exchange for some cash – a solution to their problems that seems too good to be true.
Xeph Suarez is a Mindanaoan filmmaker based in Manila, Philippines. He has directed a number of short films including Si Astri maka si Tambulah, which won Best Director and received a Jury Citation at the Cinemalaya Philippine Independent Film Festival 2018. The film was screened in several international film festivals, including PÖFF Shorts – Tallinn Black Nights and Tampere Film Festival.
He is the producer of the 2016 QCinema International Film Festival’s Best Short Film, Hondo. The film was later competed at the 2017 Jogja- NETPAC Asian Film Festival.
He is currently developing his first feature film Dancing the Tides, which has participated at the Full Circle Lab, Singapore International Film Festival’s Southeast Asian Film Lab, EAVE’s Ties that Bind, and La Fabrique Cinéma de l’Institut français in Cannes.
The year is 1979, the Skylab satellite is falling to earth. In the days leading up to the crash, two troubled schoolboys wait for doomsday, only to realize that darker forces are threatening their fragile world.
Chuck Escasa was born and raised in Pasig, Rizal. He is married to Ilongga filmmaker Aimee Apostol-Escasa. They live in Tagaytay.
A documentary crew covers the Philippine Giant Monster Defense Institute’s Mighty Robo V program, the Philippines’ only line of defense against Giant Monsters. The crew captures the struggles of Institute, revealing that maybe the wrong people were hired for the job.
Mihk Vergara is a Filipino writer and director for tv, digital and film since 2004. While having dipped his hands in advertising, music video, tv and film it is his love for telling stories that continues to drive him forward in whatever medium he finds himself expressing himself in.
Over the course of his career he has served as series planner and writer for the mystery thriller show Jasmine for the Philippine Network TV5, head writer for Project Runway Philippines Season 1, series planner, episode writer and director on the cult underground show, Rakista, and director for the children’s show, Alex and Amie.
A fan of collaboration, he has co-directed two shorts with his fellow filmmakers: the drama-comedy, Ang Maskot with Chris Costello and the special effects comedy, Carpioman with Miko Livelo. He has also helped adapt the South Korean drama, Tunnel, for the Indonesian market under Base Entertainment with Zig Marasigan and Tanya Yuson.
His first feature film, Patintero: Ang Alamat ni Meng Patalo, won the Audience Choice and Gender Sensitivity awards when it was released in 2015 at the QCinema International Film Festival and was screened at the
Special Programs, New Action! Southeast Asia section of the Osaka Asian Film Festival in 2017. His latest work is writing for the Netflix Original Anime Series, Trese.
Miko Livelo is a Filipino film and TV director. After studying Fine Arts majoring in Advertising from the University of Sto. Tomas, he took up Film at the Asia Pacific Film Institute (APFI).
He started his career as a motion graphics artist and soon directed his first film, Blue Bustamante (2013), his entry to the Cinema One Film Festival, where it won Best Production Design. The film premiered internationally at the Osaka Asian Film Festival.
In 2014, together with filmmaker Joel Ferrer, Miko established the company PUNCHKICK, where he wrote and directed series, ads and films. His most famous series is Tanods, a digital series under D5 Studio about a ragtag group of neighborhood watch. He also directed Sa Ngalan ni Ultimate Warrior (In the Name of Ultimate Warrior), a short film for the QCinema International Film Festival 2014 about a kid’s love for wrestling.
He joined The Ideafirst Company shortly after and directed #ParangNormal Activity (2016, TV5) and I Love You To Death (2016, Regal films). He recently finished directing two films, a friendship-comedy film, ‘Tol (2019) and Unlilife (2019), a fantasy-comedy adventure film.
His filmmaking is based on his personal experiences wrapped in humor, family and love for Japanese pop culture.