The Woman Who Left

Death in the Land of Encantos

Kagadanan sa Banwaan Ning mga Engkanto (English: Death in the Land of Encantos) is a 2007 Filipino television miniseries created and written by Lav Diaz. The five-episode drama would be edited into a nine-hour feature released in 2013. Philippine poet Benjamin Agusan hearkens back to his village Padang after seven years in Europe. Horrified to discover that the community has been buried under landslides, he wanders the countryside, reconnecting with friends, lovers, and family whose lives teeter on the brink of destruction.

From What Is Before

The Philippines, 1972. Mysterious things are happening in a remote barrio. Wails are heard from the forest, cows are hacked to death, a man is found bleeding to death at the crossroad, and houses are burned. Ferdinand E. Marcos announces Proclamation No. 1081, putting the entire country under Martial Law.

Batang West Side

When a Filipino teen is found fatally shot on the streets of New Jersey, the investigation into his death reveals the struggles of the Filipino-American community, including the horrifying effects of methamphetamine on its youth.

Storm Children

The Philippines is visited by an average of 20~28 strong typhoons and storms every year. It is the most storm-battered country in the world. Last year, Typhoon Haiyan, considered the strongest storm in history, struck the Philipines, leaving in its path apocalyptic devastation.

Norte, the End of History

An embittered law student commits a brutal double murder; a family man takes the fall and is forced to take a harsh sentence; and a mother and her two children wander the countryside in search of some kind of redemption.

Melancholia

Three people start a strange therapy to escape their agonies. Each attempts to process those they lost during the Marcos dictatorship while examining their own grief.

The Day Before the End

In the year 2050, the Philippines braces for the coming of the fiercest storm ever to hit the country. And as the wind and waters start to rage, poets are being murdered.

Magellan

At the dawn of the modern era, Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan leads an expedition under the Spanish crown in search of the first westward route to the Spice Islands. He embarks on a perilous journey across the uncharted Pacific, where his fleet faces starvation, mutiny, and the psychological toll of endless seas. Upon reaching the shores of Cebu, Magellan is pulled into a fatal conflict with the natives by his drive to spread Catholicism, culminating in his tragic doom.

Prologue to the Great Desaparecido

Andrés Bonifacio, the freedom fighter known as the father of the Philippine revolution, was executed by rival revolutionaries in 1897. His wife, Gregoria de Jesus, searched for his body in the mountains for 30 days. It was never found.

Wake (Subic)

First begun in 2006, WAKE (SUBIC) completes the documentary diptych, FOR EXAMPLE, THE PHILIPPINES, the first part of which, VAPOR TRAIL (CLARK) was released in 2010. Collectively this nine-hour essay explores circumstances of toxic contamination around the former US military bases in the Philippines as the locus for a meditation on historical amnesia, colonial privilege, and the consequences of unchecked militarism. Interweaving both cinéma-vérité and interview footage of Filipino victims and their families, environmental spokespersons, and community activists, along with early photographic material pertaining to the Philippine-American War, partisan songs, historical texts, and landscape photography, both films are an attempt to construct a work capable of rendering some measure of this human and environmental tragedy and the complexities of its remedy.

Naked Under the Moon

A young woman recalls how her father (a fallen priest), her mother (a woman with a secret past) and her teenage sister returned with her to live in their ancestral home after the family business failed. She was plagued with mysterious problems of sleepwalking and began a romance with a young man who tried to cure her.

Investigation on the Night That Won't Forget

Erwin Romulo, the late Alexis Tioseco’s best friend, recalls the events after the critic and his girlfriend Nika Bohinc’s untimely death in their home in Quezon City. Diaz makes use of one long take to allow Romulo an uninterrupted narration of the events. The pain of recalling is palpable.

Venice 70: Future Reloaded

Made for the Venice Film Festival's 70th anniversary, seventy filmmakers made a short film between 60 and 90 seconds long on their interpretation of the future of cinema.

Lily

Stories abound in Cebu about a woman rumored to be a murderous monster, but behind the myth is a mother seeking justice.

Jeonju Digital Project 2012

Del Mundo

This biographical documentary honors Doy del Mundo’s lifelong devotion to education, film, and public service; his pioneering role in shaping Philippine film education; and his enduring impact on institutions and generations he helped build and uplift.

The Salvation

In 1870s America, a peaceful American settler kills his family's murderer which unleashes the fury of a notorious gang leader. His cowardly fellow townspeople then betray him, forcing him to hunt down the outlaws alone.

Titus

Titus Andronicus returns from the wars and sees his sons and daughters taken from him, one by one. Shakespeare's goriest and earliest tragedy.

Fresh

Death and violence anger twelve year old drug courier Fresh, who sets his rival employers against each other.

Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia

An American bartender and his prostitute girlfriend go on a road trip through the Mexican underworld to collect a $1 million bounty on the head of a dead gigolo.

The Quick and the Dead

A mysterious woman comes to compete in a quick-draw elimination tournament, in a town taken over by a notorious gunman.

Diary ng Panget

A young woman takes a job as a personal maid for a rich young man. The pair do not get along, but soon due to their classmates' games of love, their relationship grows more complicated than before.

Boiling Point

Masaki, a baseball player and gas-station attendant, gets into trouble with the local Yakuza and goes to Okinawa to get a gun to defend himself. There he meets Uehara, a tough gangster, who is in serious debt to the yakuza and planning revenge.

Zero Day

Two troubled adolescents chronicle the events that ultimately lead up to a terrifying assault on their school.