National Commission for Culture and the Arts

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.

A historical drama focusing on Manuel L. Quezon years after the Philippine Revolution during the American occupation. When his fight for independence from the United States is put to the test, Quezon finds himself playing the brutal game of politics to outmaneuver his rivals — including Leonard Wood, Sergio Osmeña, and Joven Hernando. In Quezon’s relentless quest for power, he ultimately faces off with Emilio Aguinaldo in the 1935 presidential elections, using charm and favoritism as both weapons and currency, in a campaign that ultimately changes the face of Philippine politics and history.

Orphaned by war, 12-year old Nikol found a new home in Isla Kalilintad, an island community of people from different cultures and faith traditions. He was forced to become an adult at a tender age, trying to eke out a living to feed Langit, his younger brother. By serendipitous circumstance, Dr Sittie and Sr Claire, a team of humanitarian workers on a mobile medical mission, visited the isla before they proceed to the other smaller islands. Nikol, eager to grab the chance to work, presented himself as a natural healer and got accepted as an all around utility person for the mission. The mobile medical mission which runs on a low budget, relies on fishing boats offered by the communities they serve as they make their way to far-flung villages rarely reached by medical services from both government and private sector. Each journey to these unknown frontiers bears stories of struggle and survival of people affected by war and extreme poverty.

Count is a short essay film that plays with the idea of internalized historical misalignment. It is a probing into the unseen discrepancy that has exponentially grown throughout the centuries. It starts with the author's sons, as they start their online distance learning, in the context of a pandemic raging in the midst of a Drug War, both with fatalities miscounted and uncounted.

Lorna, a mother of two, just lost her husband, a fisherman one morning in a tragic sea accident. She was left with no choice but to raise her own family. In a town where women are regarded as inferior, she defies the odds by being the first woman “mangingisda” in order to feed her kids. Will she be able to rule out the ways of the sea? How long till’ the community accepts her defiance?"

A runaway daughter comes home, in need of money for an operation. She asks her for money but her mother strongly refused and just scolded her. So she stole her mother’s rooster but immediately bonded with the chicken. While her mother frantically searches for her lost rooster, she finds it on the hill, with Lilian standing beside it. Lilian confesses her real situation. Unexpectedly, she receives the reassurance that she needs, something that she would never have thought of earlier.

A woman with falling hair, anxious about her online work, a child unable to leave her room in a power outage, and a yoga buff with body issues, all encounter an unseen terror while alone in their urban middle-class homes during the nationwide quarantine.

Jay is the name of the two protagonists in the film, one is living, the other dead. The living Jay is producing a documentary of the dead Jay, a gay teacher who was brutally killed. As Jay recreates and examines the life of his subject, his own life is affected when he unravels his subject's hidden life and secret love.

A filmmaker’s reflection about his life during the pandemic, as "the flames are climbing up the wall."

Inside the Rabadon house, nobody talks. Lives are kept to themselves; problems are not shared; questions are not entertained. The people living inside it have become used to leaving everything unstirred especially Margaret, the mother of the home. Margaret's desire for cleanliness and order alienates her from her family. She cannot confront the problems of her life and so she confronts dirty dishes, ugly stains, and disorderly appliances. To get to know her family, she snoops around - entering rooms, opening cabinets, reading journals she is not supposed to read. But everything changes when a journal entry of her daughter's makes her unravel, stirring the unstirred life that she has held on to for years.

After the lockdown silenced the Higantes festivities, Tupe finds himself jobless and isolated. He sees a glimmer of hope when he qualifies to receive financial help from the government. But getting his hands on that money is not as easy as he thought it would be.

Hernan, a lowly informal dweller, gets engaged in a trivial property dispute with his neighbor. He is criminally charged with attempted murder after a heated altercation. He brings out a bolo from the kitchen to confront his neighbor. At that time his wife is slaving herself in Dubai as an OFW, and he is left to give unconditional care to her 2 children from her first marriage.

It’s December 2020, more than nine months of community quarantine in the Philippines. The idea of nothingness is actual and symbolic. With imposed restrictions in the physical world, how can we tell our personal and collective stories of living under the “longest COVID-19 lockdown in the world”? Confined at home, physical and non-physical boundaries are magnified as the filmmaker attempts to articulate existence through floating in time and space.

When they have no one to pass their "mutya" forward so they can finally die, aging "aswangs" in Antique are believed to seek for the mystical lake in Negros where they can just turn into ashes and disappear forever. This is the story of a 78 year old aswang and the young man who helped her find the lake.

An exploration of how we use the masks as our new faces in these trying times. It shows a perspective of what life is like during the pandemic through poetry, metaphor, movements, and the use of painted masks.

This documentary features the endangered languages of the Dupaninan Agta in Isabela, and the Tandulanen Tagbanua in Palawan, Philippines. The film follows the journey of Consuelo and Robert against the backdrop of the changing ecosystem in the grasslands of Isabela, where endemic grasses are being slowly displaced by invasive foreign species, and ends in the beaches of Palawan once inhabited by mythological crabs. As a poetic and lyrical rumination on the beauty of words, this docu shows how language is indeed the soul of a culture.

In times of necessary physical distancing, ten couples from the filmmaker’s hometown allow the cameras into their homes not to disturb but capture any delicate exchange.

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.

The amazing adventures of Gunam-gunam (Rumi) and Guni-guni (Phantasm). Adapted from the book Auxiliary Materials for Teaching the Filipino Language by Kelly Sta. Ana Nicolas (Philippine Normal College, 1964).

Makoy, Kaloy, and Buknoy wake up to an announcement about going back to school. Parents who do not want or are unable to opt for online classes must take an exam to determine if they are fit to teach their children. Unfortunately, most parents in this small town are not as privileged as their children who've had formal education.