Albert Banzon

After years of imprisonment in the Middle East for a crime he did not commit, Lino finally returns to his small town. He hopes to relive his lost dreams and bring back everything that was taken away from him. With his red suitcase filled with misery and uncertainty, he reunites with his past. Revisiting what he left behind, he discovers that life went on without him. As he tries to fill the emptiness, he realizes that he is now the void.

A reinvention of the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, set in contemporary Manila as a rock musical.

In the near future, Manila is an almost-utopian city, but they still believe in ghost stories. Nobody survives the mysterious blackouts that happen in random parts of the city after midnight. Nobody believes the horrors in its darkness are even real. Four friends are about to find out that you don’t need to believe, for it to come for you.

Mikey is at the peak of his career as a chef, but to everyone's confusion, he remains single and unattached. Unbeknownst to them, beneath his manly and innocent good looks lies an insatiable, dark secret. Armed with a telescope, he spies on unsuspecting women inside condo units across his own. One fateful night, his sights catch onto Kim as she makes love to her rich middle-aged partner, Rudy. Their worlds collide when Kim and Rudy begins frequenting the posh restaurant Mikey co-owns. With a common desire to satisfy their needs, Kim and Mikey embark on a dangerous love affair that puts their lives in peril.

Ace, 23, and Miko, 17, desperately want to become famous actors but it seems the Universe has a different plan for their lives.

A small-town midwife’s preparation for a job interview is disrupted by series of unfortunate turn of events.

Eight year-old Yael, shy to a fault, lives in her own private world. One day she finds out about a pen that can "translate" the thoughts and feelings of nervous people.

Life turns riveting for Nanong when the tabloid-format reality TV show, AKIN ANG KORONA chances upon his curious life in a sleepy seaside town in Catanauan Quezon. Nanong agrees to film his daily life drying herring, with a deal that they would help find his lost father. Nanong’s quest for a missing parent will become a search of truth, of wonder, of the self-wrapped in the direction framed for and by the TV program.

A half-black half-Filipino Michael Jordan wanna-be sets his way towards his “hoop dreams.”

This is not a film by Khavn. A crime-thriller retro-road movie based on the Kuratong Baleleng Rubout Massacre of 1995.

As a typhoon bears down on a sleepy rural town in the Philippines, strange events and even stranger behaviour foreshadow the watery catastrophe to come.

Filipino director Adolfo Alix Jr. returns to the Festival with this timely story of a couple caught up in Rodrigo Duterte’s violent war on drugs when their son goes missing.

A documentarist’s son goes missing when she films a story on the disappearances of the firstborns in a remote island.

1901, Balangiga. Eight-year-old Kulas flees town with his grandfather and their carabao to escape General Smith's Kill & Burn order. He finds a toddler amid a sea of corpses and together, the two boys struggle to survive the American occupation.

Pastor Luis Aguila and his family are seemingly tested with their faith. Luis is an ex-convinct who is now the head of his church. Mildred, his wife, tries to hide her secret as she grapples between her family and church duties. Their youngest son Carlo wrestles with growing up and tying up his family together. All of them try to overcome these obstacles but things intensify when Pastor Aguila's daughter, Katrina defies her family when she falls in love with the mysterious Jigo.

Raped and pregnant, an OFW rids herself of unwanted baggage on the flight back home.

Drug-dealing and sex-starved goons mistakenly disturbs the peaceful lives of a frail witch and her grandchild in a remote town in the mountains.

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.

Consuelo, a ghost who has haunted Escolta for many years, finds a respite from her loneliness in Joey, a young man who has just died. As the two ghosts pass the time before Joey moves to the afterlife, Consuelo questions her reasons for staying put.

Decades before the rise of liberalism in Spanish-era colonial Philippines, a young charismatic preacher leads a movement for equality and religious freedom for his fellow native Filipinos. He is hailed as the Christ of the Tagalogs, but is sentenced to death for heresy by both Church and State.

Ordinary People is a family portrait of Jane, 16, and her boyfriend, Aries, who live on their own in the chaotic streets of Manila. Surviving as pickpockets, the lives of the young couple change when they suddenly become teenage parents. But not even a month into parenthood, their child is stolen from them. In order to retrieve the child, the young couple is forced to take desperate measures.

A bunch of 10-year-old kids rob pedestrians and kill without a mercy. But after a failed bank robbery, the dangerous game comes to an end with twenty years of imprisonment. After two decades, they are released but soon begin to disappear one by one.

Three friends wait along Dalton Pass every dawn to jump at the back of rice delivery trucks to steal the goods and sell it at the wet market as their means of income. One of them accidentally gets a pack of drugs in one of the trucks they jumped and finds themselves in jeopardy when its owners track them down to retrieve the stash, and gives them a chance to get off the hook by means of taking on a risky mission.

Amid legalized corruption, a son struggles to prove to his father that he is fit to survive in a dog-eat-dog society.

Paul is a restless twenty-something who cannot get his life together. Worse, he’s been holding on to his love towards Red, his best friend Ivan’s boyfriend. Looking for a sense of direction, he goes to Siem Reap and meets Tang, who falls in love with him. But when Ivan leaves Red without any explanation, Paul finds himself caught between chasing his unrequited love for Red or choosing Tang, the one who is always willing to give him love that he cannot return.

Manila is besieged by the worst typhoon to hit the country. Talk of the world coming to an end hangs in the air. And five men find themselves stranded inside a police station with a prisoner who may o may not be the devil. It's going to be a long night.

Mabuti accidentally finds a stash of money that could bring an end to her family’s financial problems: is the solution that simple or is it loaded with complications?

A young girl from the countryside dreams of disappearing. She plays a lonely game of hide-and-seek while her mother quotes the Bible and her father relishes in alcohol and history. She decides to put on a stage play based on an old Filipino film about a family who disappears in the mountains during the war. But soon after the performance, she vanishes from the car, prompting her parents to look for her in the woods. One by one, they all start to disappear.

An assassin, a porn dubber and a transgender. Three souls. One explicit illusion. To find the ultimate joy in their empty lives. A safe haven, where passion and love mean humanity, ecstasy means enlightenment; and the soul is the ultimate arbiter of the truth.

The story of its namesake - the forcible transfer of 76000 American and Filipino prisoners of war by the Japanese Army in 1942.

A small town in the Philippines is turned upside down by the arrival of a film crew that has everyone excited. Meanwhile, 13-year-old Lukas finds his own world overturned when he is told that his father is a tikbalang (half horse, half man). His father’s disappearance leaves Lukas to try to unravel the mystery of his own heritage and his own nature.

EDSA XXX takes us on a wild ride through the ups and downs, twists and turns in the life of one man’s downfall and the rise to fame of another. The present leader KULOG NEGRO has led the country to progress; his rallying call is championing poverty for the benefit of tourists and film festivals. But the well-meaning leader is a mere puppet in the political arena and someone has just decided that he has to go.

A woman runs her criminal syndicate all the while taking care of her family.

Julian is a soldier stationed on a remote island in the Philippines. He has finished his three months of service on the island and is ready to leave, but news of a coup d’état in Manilla forces Julian to stay on the island longer. All Julian has is a walkie-talkie, radio and TV. Meanwhile, Julian senses someone watching him. When Julian loses contact with the main base, soldiers Lucio and Eric are sent to the island. The soldiers then talk about a soldier previously stationed on the island and his encounters with a mermaid.

Makoto of the Japanese Imperial Army decided to go into hiding after the Japanese soldiers were defeated in 1945. In the dread of the forest, he decides to struggle despite efforts for him to surrender, thinking the war is not yet over. For a span of almost 20 years, he encounters different situations that will test his persona and his strength to his vow as a Japanese soldier.

Impoverished, childless and living in a garbage dump, Miguel and Lina become instant celebrities when Lina miraculously becomes pregnant. But Lina gives birth to a fish, which increases her celebrity but leaves Miguel humiliated and the couple at odds. What follows is an illuminating examination of how this unusual family copes and compromises in the face of a modern-day miracle.

Set at the inauguration of the new President is the inter-woven tales of people dealing with daily lives: their relationships, desires and their means of survival. A taxi driver trying to stop his best friend from leaving for the province while his ex-wife comes back to his life; a young actor doing extra job as male prostitute; a Fil-Am trying to fill his need for drugs; and a young cigarette vendor who also act as pimp at night. All of them get through their harsh realities with hopes of a better tomorrow while their fate awaits them to cross its path in the uncaring streets of Manila.

It’s not easy for ambition to survive in a place like Tondo, one of the poorest and roughest slums of Manila. But thirteen-year-old Chrisval de Castro, who has lived in Tondo all his life, isn’t afraid to dream big. Almost every day, the first year high school student and part-time padyak boy can be spotted practicing football on the streets outside his house. He dreams of playing football for the Philippine national team one day.

Mondomanila tells the story of teenage anti-hero Tony de Guzman and the rough neighborhood he calls home.

An ex-seminarian slash communist runs a hotel in Baguio. He then meets a handsome upcoming lawyer. A once-a-year trip to Baguio by the lawyer and conversations with the hotel owner develop into an affair which encompasses decades of socio-political changes in the country.

Orphaned brothers in the Southern Philippines stay with their relatives and take dangerous work.

Good fortune does a family more harm than benefit in this independent drama from author and filmmaker Mes de Guzman. Young Vergel left his family to take as job as a miner, and following a long stretch away from home he returns and enjoys a reunion with his younger siblings, a mischievous brother and a sister who is newly aware of matters of the heart. All is well in the household until Vergel makes a startling discovery -- there are gold deposits on the family's farm. Vergel's first concern is the safety and well-being of his family, but as the value of the gold claim rises, his lust for money begins to overpower his common sense and regard for others.

Deaf dancing boy meets troubled rocker chick in a Baguio camp for Deaf and hearing kids where find that they have more in common with each other including a love for music.

"The social worker Aurora is kidnapped by a group of Moslem rebels who have lost their ideals and only plunder. In a military attack on the camp where Aurora is being held, she manages to escape. But in the jungle, she doesn't have a hope and two attackers find her the same night. Her name means 'first light of day', but it's not at all certain that Aurora will make it that far." - IFFR

A tribute to filmmakers and National Artists Lino Brocka and Ishmael Bernal. In the "Day" segment, Piolo Pacual portrays the role of William, a drug addict who tries to rebuild his sense of self and reconnect with the people around him. For the "Night" segment, Pascual portrays the role of Philip, who works as a bodyguard for a mayor's son. The bodyguard believes that his boss considers him as part of the family but after a shooting incident, he realizes his real worth to his boss. As he struggles to hide, he is slowly consumed by the claws of darkness lurking the city.

Purports to document the production of a short about a young man’s first sexual experience while doubling as a coming-out film and a multiply layered making-of movie.

A group of gays is on a road trip in search for a beauty contest crown. Constantly losing in beauty contest in their city, five young cross-dressers and their elder gay manager travel to the province hoping to lure the contest. Each personality has story to tell.

Narcisa "Sisa" Dalangin is a young Filipina during the Spanish Occupation & is a childhood friend of Jose Rizal.

Rita is named after a famous American movie star whom her late, former actress grandmother once adored. She lives in one of Manila’s oldest districts with her busy mother and entrepreneurial aunt. Years later, she is still the same girl enamoured with television, now also tending to her aunt’s stall selling pirated DVD movies. Elsewhere, there survives footages of a movie done before the war.

Adela, a former radio personality, celebrates her 80th birthday. Alone, and without support, she longs for the family and stability of years gone by. Mundane events take on heightened meaning as Adela gauges her life against those of the sea of humanity. Adela is about the quiet moments in life that can fill us with either joy or sorrow.

A one-sided romance, from the gazer (JK Anicoche) and the subject of his gaze (Abner Delina), a sleeping man wearing a coat and a top hat.

A story about three children struggling in a depressed neighborhood with their means of survival arriving from the package given to them by their parents who works abroad.

In the darker side of Manila-by-night, tribes of youthful gangsters roam the streets in search of quick fixes and precarious thrills. World-weary Tondo throbs to the beat of of hiphop and freestyle gangsta rap, and to the scents and sensations of drugs and sex and violence. We witness this crepus-cular underworld through the eyes of ten-year-old Ebet. We follow him as he witnesses the deadly lives of teen age gang members in Tondo and the events that lead to their explosive confrontation.

Mix-mastering history, the paranoid thriller, the documentary and the landscape film, pic tells of very different fates for two sets of brothers in oppressive Philippine settings.

Girls are hidden in a dark room.

Imahe Nasyon is a groundbreaking, conceptual omnibus film by 20 alternative filmmakers who were tasked to present their personal visions on national issues. Renowned line producers Jon and Carol Red hatched the idea of revisiting the 1986 EDSA revolution, challenging directors to answer the question "What happened after 1986?" with a short film not longer than five minutes each. Despite individual techniques, the same goal is shared: to depict a truthful image of the nation at present.

Basically an artist is also a terrorist, the protagonist thinks in an unguarded moment. And if he is a terrorist after all, then he might just as well be one. Not an instant product, but an experimental feature in which diary material is brought together to form an intriguing puzzle.

K. loves Ana. But Ana’s now gone. Once she was there. But not anymore. A chance encounter from their past leads to this new meeting between K. and Ana. A mix of music video, poetry reading, and offbeat romance – this is Khavn’s wildside romance.

The Pinoy vampire - a bloodthirsty Aswang - stalks the streets of Quezon City in search of fresh victims while attempting to stay one step ahead of a dangerous human predator. Gruesome and grisly murders are our entry point into the psyche of the Aswang of Quezon City. More a meditation on the workings of a disturbed mind than a detective thriller, it nonetheless shows us a cat and mouse mind game. We watch and squirm in terror as the Pinoy vampire strikes again and again.

A brother and sister trek over mountains, cross rivers, and walk over a bridge between cliffs to and from school. After school, they take care of pigs and their ill grandfather in bed. At night they dine with their older brother and do homework. Looks like a simple life which has nothing to lose, but it has. When news arrives that the mine is collapsed where their older siblings have been working to support them, the family falls in danger of starvation. The repetition of daily life mixes with dramatic tension which gradually rushes to them.

A man's friends hire a prostitute on his birthday for him to lose his virginity. But after finding out that she is a middle-aged woman, they decide to ditch her, except for the birthday boy, who likes older women.

Strikingly captivating and accessible short film by someone who tends to make more experimental and raw films, even though the situation in the film is raw enough as it is. We follow Piling, a young soccer fanatic, through a slum district of Manila. No ball or cleats, but a Coke can and flip-flops are the ingredients for a virtuoso demonstration of the football art. Only at the end does it become apparent why the little ball juggler will never be a Ronaldinho.

Absurdist short comedy in the best camp and gore tradition. Little Ali has the handicap as a boxer that he keeps crying continually and heartrendingly. As a result, he keeps losing his bouts with the lightweight boxing champion Mad Cow. One day he sees an advertisement by the Klinika Lakrima, where they can operate to remove his tear ducts. Sensitivity is not the right word to describe this operation.

Pinoi Rock & Rhythm sheds the spotlight on four obscure yet significant figures in contemporary Philippine Popular Culture. Rebel Disc Jockey Dante "Howlin" Dave David, Stills Photographer and former stuntman Mr. Johnny Albia, Elvis Presley devotee Mr. Chito Bertol and Pinoy Rock guitar icon Mr. Jun Lopito. The documentary unfolds lighthearted, candid and sometimes outrageous introspection from the four individuals on the ups and downbeats of their respective careers.

A wounded activist ends up in a toilet and meets two members of the oppressed masses whose only reality is living on toilet fees.

A wounded activist ends up in a toilet and meets two members of the oppressed masses whose only reality is living on toilet fees.

Juan shared his food to a man. But the man wants more and steals his food while he was asleep.