National Commission for Culture and the Arts

When an alien comes back to take him, a mouthless young man's life twists and turns as his memories untangle.

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.

Boses (Voices) is the story of a musician named Ariel who offers violin lessons to a child of the slums. Through the violin, the abused child Onyok is able to get back his voice from a mute, desensitized existence. A violin teacher and his student, a mute 7-year old abused child in a shelter, develop a friendship stemming from their love of music. Ariel discovers the immense talent of Onyok hiding behind a veneer of silence and pain caused by an unhappy and cruel father. In the developing relationship of teacher and student, both characters reveal more of themselves that otherwise may have remained unspoken. They discover each other's strengths and failures through the violin lessons.

Padre De Pamilya is a story about a father Joselito Mirasol (Ariel Rivera) whose only wish is for his children to grow up as good Catholic Christians. Unfortunately, his salary as a government officer is not enough to make ends meet. And because he is working under a corrupt mayor (Tessie Tomas), the temptation to become a corrupt government official are always there.

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.

While trying to cozy up to the sexy and mysterious Mina, who recently moved into the boardinghouse above his shop, unlucky Xerox operator Lito is unwittingly placing his life in grave danger.

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.

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.

At the start of the twentieth century, a small province-island earned the moniker 'Sugar Bowl' when it became the sugar capital of the Philippines- the Island of Negros.

ITAN's parents, 12, Sambal Ayta, have fully decided that he will not continue his education. He said that he has reached Grade 6 enough where he can read and write, he said he will only help the family to get the heart of the banana and eat in the mountains. The study is not supposed to be for curls like him, but only for those who are stretched. Itan's dream seemed to crumble and despair until he found a broken computer keyboard.

A fisherman living along the Bicol River searches for his missing wife. His faith in God is tested when he finally finds her.

In 1982, a fourteen-year-old movie fanatic from an underprivileged family in the Municipality of Manapla coincidentally witnesses the production shoot of Oro, Plata, Mata in his hometown. Full of determination he approaches the director, Peque Gallaga, in the hopes of landing a job that would help in providing for his family, and feed his passion.

The night before the lockdown, while reviewing some unused footages from my latest film project (Hinulid), a small box from an anonymous sender arrives. The box contains a Bikol translation of the Tagalog long poem, Ibong Adarna, and an egg.

Lockdowns and quarantines did not deter sixteen filmmakers from Luzon, Visayas, Mindanao, and the National Capital Region from chronicling their struggles and triumphs during the pandemic time in the way they know best: through film. ECQ: Eksena Cinema Quarantine (COVID-19 Filmmakers' Diaries), a project under the National Commission for Culture and the Arts, National Committee on Cinema (NCCA-NCC), in cooperation with University of St. La Salle Artists' Hub, features sixteen filmmakers namely Adjani Arumpac, Hiyas Baldemor Bagabaldo, Arbi Barbarona, Glenn Barit, Carlo Enciso Catu, Zurich Chan, Arden Rod Condez, Kristian Sendon Cordero, Khavn, Keith Deligero, Kyle Fermindoza, Bagane Fiola, Mark L. Garcia, Julienne Ilagan, Pam Miras, and Guillermo Ocampo.

A wounded activist ends up in a toilet and meets two members of the oppressed masses whose only reality is living on toilet fees.

During the Japanese occupation of the Philippines during World War II, a young girl from Vigan and an idealistic Japanese officer fall in love. With a war between them and disapproval from both sides, the two struggle to find their own piece of happiness in the world as duty and family threaten to tear them apart.

Gibson Bonifacio stopped speaking when he was a child. Now twenty, he returns home to Manila for Christmas. While always festive in the Philippines, for his family it is tinged with sadness, marking the anniversary of his twin brother’s death.

Shot in Oriental Mindoro, Philippines, Brutus follows two kids smuggling logs from the mountains. It is about the journey that opens their eyes to a 'world' that is ruled by greed and torn by the political conflicts.

Mina, a pretty and intelligent 18-year-old student in a town, falls victim to a viral sex video the circulated in her school. This forced her mother Rita, an overseas Filipino worker in the Middle East, to go on an emergency leave to take care of her only daughter who was severely affected by the incident. In the following days, strange things start to happen to Mina at home and at school. Her nose bleeds endlessly, a python appears in their home, and she sees the spirits of her ancestors come to their house. A healer, an old woman from the next barrio, is called to treat Mina’s strange afflictions. The old woman surmises that Mina’s ancestors had come to tell her of an important message but Mina is stubborn and continues to ignore the signs communicated.

After saving a drowning child 13 feet under the sea, a man has to adapt to living with his developing scales and gills.