Rising Star

Birdie is a lonely, aspiring illustrator obsessed with perfecting his work. One day, he is granted a gift from the heavens, transforming his life both for the better, and for the worse.

A hornet that is stuck inside a photocopier is unable to fly. With nowhere left to go before its inevitable demise, the hornet reminisces a birthday greeting from the past until every word spoken begins to die.

At the height of a creative block brought about by the repetitiveness of pandemic living, a filmmaker attempts to create a film out of unused takes from his previous works.

Ruejan, a grade schooler with a fascination for celestial bodies, dislikes modular learning. His older sister, a restaurant cashier, grounds his ambitious dreams to the realities of education being a requirement for a bright future.

Coping up from his father’s untimely passing, a college dropout is haunted by his sheltered upbringing as he prepares for the job application of his lifetime.

A lonely, elderly patriarch spends his final days struggling to reconnect with the modern world, a stray soul who finds final comfort among a growing number of stray cats and dogs in the household.

Manny and Yvette, with contrasting personalities, work to make ends meet for their family eatery amidst the COVID-19 pandemic while simultaneously getting involved in charity work for their parish church.

Distant childhoods are examined between two families: a Filipino family residing in the Philippines, and a Fil-Am family residing in the United States, through a series of vacation trip stills taken five years apart from each other.

Filipinos inside their homes go about their daily routines during the rainy season. Some are waiting for unexpected moments to break the cyclic nature of pandemic living, while others are stuck inside individual bodies that continuously work in motion. The rain never seems to stop, resulting to the spaces they occupy beginning to show signs of decay. Slowly, these people and these spaces converge into one entity. While on the streets, a commanding voice assures the Filipino people that the sun will soon rise again.

An old, forgetful actress is left for good by her caretaker who looks exactly like her leading man from her glory days. He exploits her material wealth before vanishing without a trace, leaving the old actress traumatized. One day, a mysterious woman makes an unexpected arrival in her household, breaking in the actress' temporary world and changing her life forever.