Darna: A Stone Is A Heart You Cannot Swallow

When their abusive father is murdered by a neighbour, two brothers must grapple with loss and liberty while navigating their friendship with the killer’s son. A deeply felt debut about the complexities of crime and inherited guilt.

Drawing from a travel account of a foreigner in the Philippines from the early 1900s, three oft-told stories from folklore are reimagined through the disembodied voice of a stranger from the future, recounting with detached curiosity and amusement its engagement with people who were “growing and dying in dull routine”. Blending actualities and artifice, this film is about spells we may have fallen under.

A man rises. Leaves. He looks back at himself, then disappears to the sea.

Two lovers sitting on a now deteriorating edifice, which by day looks like a pockmark in the middle of a park bustling with construction work. But it’s night-time and the lovers are quiet and too exhausted to look back, or ahead. The dust of the day hasn’t settled yet but the present already feels as elusive as memory.

The film traces the fierce delicacy of tiny lives — flickering between serenity and violence, survival and surrender.

When the waves lap against the shore, when the salt of tears are wasted away in the foaming, how does sorrow surface from the depths? The film examines how the gravity of loss turns two women into unwitting ghosts. The radio waves provide a diversion for one, as the other mourns in silence.