Sometime in 1998, Filipino filmmaker Sari Dalena and co-director Camilla Benolirao Griggers set out to record and revisit little-known genocides committed by colonial U.S. forces in southwestern Philippines during the Philippine-American War of 1899 for their hybrid, avant-garde first feature Memories of a Forgotten War, released in 2001 and screened …
Three boys living in a rural, riverside community in the Philippines are forced to reckon with enduring grief and guilt following a gruesome crime involving their fathers. Shot entirely on iPhone across 35 days without a formal script and with a nonprofessional cast doubling as film crew, I grew an …
Sports dramas are a sub-genre that allows filmmakers to take multiple different approaches. They can narrate the Cinderella story of an underdog team, the individual evolution of its players, or the downside of being an athlete. In her debut feature, Charlotte Glynn takes the latter approach. The Gymnast is a …
If you can spot the telltale signs, there’s no second-guessing that Filipino director P. R. Monencillo Patindol’s debut feature I Grew an Inch When My Father Died, now screening at Rotterdam under Bright Future, is in part a spiritual sequel to his previous shorts Hilom (Still) and Abogbaybay (Shoredust), both …
Filipino filmmaker Jerrold Tarog’s historical biopic trilogy, which began a decade ago, may just have run its course with Quezon, notwithstanding the latest installment’s prescient coda. The movie first played in Philippine theaters in October last year and screened in the Limelight program of the 2026 International Film Festival Rotterdam, …
Cinema works as a personal diary for filmmakers. The camera as an instrument substitutes the pen, words shift to images, and the stories build upon a different logic. Similar to the process of writing in a journal, there is a process involved in the act of storytelling. The written story …
Filipino filmmaker Carl Joseph Papa’s latest film 58th is a gripping animated docudrama on the infamous 2009 Maguindanao massacre, now known as the single deadliest attack on journalists in recorded history. Recently screened in the Harbour programme of the 2026 International Film Festival Rotterdam, where the director’s critically acclaimed Iti …
There is a small rural enclave in southern Philippines called Sitio Masalay, whose fields were turned into a horrific site of carnage one fateful day in November 2009, summarily taking 58 innocent lives. In the aftermath, only 57 bodies were found, and one remains missing. Director Carl Joseph Papa presciently …