Nocebo 2022
A fashion designer suffers from a mysterious illness that puzzles her doctors and frustrates her husband until help arrives in the form of a Filipino carer who uses traditional folk healing to reveal a horrifying truth.
A fashion designer suffers from a mysterious illness that puzzles her doctors and frustrates her husband until help arrives in the form of a Filipino carer who uses traditional folk healing to reveal a horrifying truth.
Stranded in the Philippines during World War II, a young girl finds that her duty to protect her dying mother is complicated by her misplaced trust in a beguiling, flesh-eating fairy.
A woman struggling to meet airline baggage requirements meets a man who comes to her aid. They form a friendship that helps them mend each other's hearts.
Lieutenant Hermes Papauran, one of the best investigators of the Philippines, is at a deep moral crossroad. As a member of the police forces, he is a first-hand witness of the murderous anti-drug campaign that his institution is implementing with dedication. The atrocities are corroding Hermes physically and spiritually, causing him a severe skin disease resulting from anxiety and guilt. As he tries to heal, a dark past haunts him and has eventually come back for a reckoning.
A starstruck girl sneaks into an actor’s house and discovers a horrifying truth about her idol.
Andres Bonifacio y de Castro is considered to be one of the most influential proponents in the struggle against Spanish colonial rule in the Philippines during the late nineteenth century. Bonifacio’s widow is searching for her husband’s missing dead body; as she and her followers stumble deeper into the jungle, they become entangled in the dense thicket of their own guilt and responsibility. The Spanish governor tries to play off the various rebel factions and their utopian visions against each other. At the same time, a badly wounded companion of Bonifacio reflects upon the victims a revolution inevitably creates. Mythology, facts and a vibrant sense of history merge.
Sonya, an old maid, is about to give up on herself until, one day, she meets a corpse in her family's embalming business that changes her life.
A 15-year-old boy goes on a hiking trip with his estranged grandfather, and overcomes the grief of losing his parents on a mountain above the clouds.
When Iyay, a single mother, learns that her estranged husband has died, she drags the entire family on a road trip from Cebu to Dumaguete to attend the funeral.
Desperately finding ways to support their sickly child, Noel and Liza welcome a new addition to their family, Ben, a rich foreigner who is hoping to build a family of his own. Together they play the game of deceit and make believe, but the truth is far from being hidden as the soap operas they consume daily that vividly mirror what they have been hiding all along.
A story focusing on a elite law school fraternity, it follows a week in the lives of a neophyte, a master, and a lawyer alumnus, and crosses the lines of money, power and connections within Manila’s society.
In the wake of her husband's death, Chedeng, 66, decides to come out of the closet. Her best friend Apple, 63, beheads her live-in partner in a fit of rage. Bound by friendship, the two elderly women, together with the severed head placed inside a Louis Vuitton bag, set off an adventure to find Chedeng's ex-girlfriend.
In the late 70s, a gang of militias, under the control of the military, terrorizes a remote village in the Philippines. The terror being inflicted on the populace is not just corporal but intensely psychological as well. They were constantly fed with apocryphal tales about the village leader. A few souls are not giving up. They are fighting. The poet/teacher/activist, Hugo Haniway, decides to find out the truth about the disappearance of his wife. A love story set in the darkest period of Philippine history, the Marcos Dictatorship. The narrative and the characters are a composite of real events and real people that happened and existed during the period. A Filipino rock opera.
Moon Lee, a celebrated award-winning actress, has become a full-time mom and divorcée since retiring. Desperate to regain her sense of self, she jumps at the chance to work with her long-time collaborator, director Roger Woo, again. Only this time, he casts her as the lead in a do-your-own stunts martial arts film. The role requires extensive training and though Moon is at first uncertain, she leaves her young son in the care of Roger’s assistant and commits herself to back-breaking training. As soon as she starts to gain some confidence, Roger breaks the news to her: the only way the film can move ahead is to cast her ex-husband, Julliard, as the male lead.
In the cold west, Motel Acacia is tasked with exterminating immigrants by the government through a BED, haunted with the spirit of a Filipino tree demon, that eats men and impregnates women. A young Filipino man, JC, is groomed by his tyrannical caucasian Father to take over the business.
In Avenida, the lives of four men intertwine, searching for something. They all find what they are looking for in one woman named Aileen.
A young drag queen, Dodong, who joins a barangay gay pageant to gain acceptance in his father’s community. He is instead met with hostility from his father, who chases him into a jungle, where he sobs to a lone bright star. What follows is the strangest night in his entire life, and an even stranger nine months when he realises he is pregnant. Dodong deals with ridicule from a barangay who does not believe him.
A department store saleslady has had enough of being an underdog. One night, she discovers a peculiar-looking gun right on her doorstep. Her life drastically changes as she discovers how much power owning a gun can give her.
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.
During a trip to the Philippines, middle-aged Norwegian Lars has met the Filipina he wants to share his life with, but to his surprise she turns him down. Lars now has to face his own prejudices and deal with this uncomfortable situation.