Special Programs in Focus

• Philippines
• 2018
• 94min

As a film marrying satire and documentary, more than a century after his death, two filmmakers struggle to make sense of the mystery that surrounds the events of the last day in the life of the Filipino hero Jose Rizal. Their atte...

Special Programs in Focus

• Philippines
• 2018
• 134min

Despite their distinct differences, the Bartolomes are struggling to keep their family intact during the dark times of Philippine Martial Law. Amanda is the mother of five children who is also trying to find her identity and purpo...

Special Programs in Focus

• Philippines
• 2018
• 136min

In Colonial Philippines, after his mother’s death, naive Kulas begins his much-awaited trip to Manila. On his way to the city, he mindlessly takes on the mission of retrieving a friar’s son and bringing him to the friar’s residenc...

Special Programs in Focus

• Philippines
• 2018
• 125min

Coinciding with a total eclipse when people believe that the world is ending, inconsequential lass Elsa witnesses an apparition of the Virgin Mary on top of the hill where, as an infant, Elsa was found and adopted by Saling. The v...

Special Programs in Focus

• Philippines
• 2018
• 118min

Flavio’s village and land are under Lizardo’s reign. Flavio is forced to brand innocent children every night with Lizardo’s mark by the head of his men in Pilo. One day, Flavio’s predecessor as panday, Tata Temio, witnesses a mete...

Special Programs in Focus

• Philippines
• 2018
• 141min

Morals follows the fractious lives of four desperate women in what has not only become one of the watershed films, but perhaps one of the first thoroughly feminist statements of Philippine Cinema’s so called second golden age. Th...

Special Programs in Focus

• Philippines
• 2018
• 127min

A Filipino-Japanese soldier falls in love with a Filipina during World War II. The war shatters the idyllic life of Rosario, a schoolteacher. Captain Masugi, a Philippine-born Japanese, chances upon Rosario’s house. Having too muc...

Special Programs in Focus

• Philippines
• 2018
• 90min

Set against the backdrop of the enigmatic Baliw-Baliw festival, Terya, a young woman from a poor Philippine fishing village, is about to board a ship to marry an old German man she has never met in order to settle her family’s deb...

Special Programs in Focus

• Philippines
• 2018
• 111min

Dona Pina is a despotic mother who favors her younger son Elis over Lorenz, consequently stoking sibling rivalry between the brothers. Dona Pina lets Elis study in Manila while she makes Lorenz work their farm. She loves Elis’ bas...

Special Programs in Focus

• Philippines
• 2018
• 110min

Under 1940s American colonial rule, the Philippines’ complex upper class, embodied by a painter and his daughters, tries to hold on to its elite past in the face of war, and attempts to reconcile outdated traditions with modern va...