After the Cinemalaya Film Festival and the Pistang Pelikulang Pilipino last August, yet another local film festival is here. The Quezon City International Film Festival (QCinema), which starts today, is here to bring you original independently-produced local films.
Eight full-length films and seven short films will be showcased in the festival so there is plenty for the audience to choose from. Check out the trailers and plots of the films below.
For specific screening times and dates, check QCinema’s website.
Full-length films
Balangiga: Howling Wilderness
In 1901 Balangiga, eight-year-old Kulas flees town with his grandfather and their carabao to escape a “kill and burn” order by American General Smith.
The Write Moment
A writer tries to get back with his ex-girlfriend by writing a romantic comedy hugot script but fails. He instead finds himself living-out the scenes he has written.
The Chanters
The Chanters is a comedy-drama film about a 12-year-old school girl and granddaughter of the last chanter of the Panay tribe in Bukidnon province.
As she perfects her dance, her grandfather begins to shows signs of dementia. As he starts to lose his memory, the granddaughter is tasked to help him complete the last of 12 remained “epics,” a vanishing tradition of their tribe
Neomanila
Toto, a teenager with no parents, is recruited by a notorious death squad. Irma, the group’s leader, becomes a mother figure to the young boy. Their loyalties are put to the test when one of their targets turns out to be someone they know.
Medusae
A documentarist’s son goes missing, she then investigates a remote island where firstborns have gone missing.
Kulay Lila ang Gabi na Binudburan Pa ng mga Bituin
Aries and Chai sign up for a couple’s retreat program. The movie follows the two as they are given free rein to fix their marriage in whatever way possible.
Dormitoryo (Mga Walang Katapusang Kuwento)
Charles, an engineering student with an eye for beauty, just returned from school to a dormitory owned by Aling Linda, a strict, lonesome widow.
Other occupants of the dorm spend the evening tucked away in solitary rooms, to discuss their shared experiences, and shared fates. “And rent is due.”
Dapol Tan Payawar na Tayug 1931
A filmmaker revisits the town of Tayug, Pangasinan, in preparation for a new feature film she is making about the folk hero Pedro Calosa and the Tayug Uprising of 1931.
She imagines scenes in her new film about the subject. The deeper she goes into her research, she uncovers the collective memories of residents of the town about Pedro Calosa and the Tayug Uprising of 1931.
Shorts:
Babylon
Two girls time travel to kill a barangay dictator to revise history.
Anya Ti Nagan Mo? (What is Your Name?)
A six-year-old girl gets lost in a cemetery in her mother’s hometown and is helped by a local stranger to get home, despite the fact they don’t speak the same language.
Si Astri Maka si Tambulah
This film is about Astri, a 16-year-old transwoman in a relationship with 17-year-old Tambulah and how it plays out with their native Sama Bajao traditions.
Pixel Paranoia
Kiko is constantly being hired by Lily to upload videos on Deep Web for a pay-per-view website.
Mysterious calls and ghostly figures begin to follow him after he uploaded and watched a video he didn’t know anything about.
Gikan Sa Ngitngit Nga Kinailadman (From the Dark Depths)
A woman mourns the drowning of a young activist from several years back. The film followers her as she “sinks into herself and recreates a story that coalesces memory, delirium, and forgetting.”
Kun’ Di Man
Blind musicians, Cindy, 61, and David, 63, strive to provide for themselves as they work as singers at public transit stations.
One of the blind singers in the organization suffers a heart attack and the duo is forced to perform separately.
Love Bites
In a busy pub in Quezon City, a grieving old man and a lively old woman run into each other and learn that “two halves make one whole.”
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