Pinoy Movies: Brillante Mendoza Selection

Follows the hostage crisis of the Dos Palmas kidnappings in the southern Philippines, the life of the hostages whose survivors were freed after an awful year in captivity.

A drama centered on the state of foster care in the Philippines.

Two elderly women bear the consequences of a crime involving their respective grandsons. One is the victim, the other is the suspect. Both weak and poor, they laboriously solicit money in the midst of a storm, one for the victim's burial, the other for the suspect's bail bond.

The story is set in Guagua, Pampanga a decade after the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo which ravaged the province with lahar. It follows the lives of woodcarver Rodolfo "Mang Rudy" Manansala and his three daughters and their relationships with the people close to them in the span of seven summers. Youngest daughter Grace marries mama's-boy Conrad and faces the reality of leaving her ancestral home, to which she is deeply rooted, to live with her in-laws. Grace. Much against her will, to the point of staging an escape, she yields to the dictates of tradition. Yet she manages to cope with married life, and in her fourth year of marriage she's pregnant with her second child. Middle daughter Lourdes, married to weakling Andy Pineda with whom she has a daughter, has an illicit affair with a bank manager, which gives Mang Rudy a heart attack and confines him to bed. For a while numbed by his wife's infidelity, Andy realizes his insignificance and retaliates by beating up and nearly killing Lourdes. Lourdes atones for her guilt by ministering to Andy's wounds after he joins the rituals of the flagellants during the Holy Week. However, they both decide to separate. Eldest daughter Jess is a lesbian whose bitter luck in life is being unwanted by her own father. Yet she serves Mang Rudy to the hilt after he gets bedridden, and she lets her girlfriend Rowena move in with them, not as much for their conveniences as lovers but so Rowena can help with the chores and looking after Mang Rudy. But when a conflict arises between Lourdes and Rowena, Mang Rudy sends Rowena away. A year later, Mang Rudy succumbs to a second attack and when he dies several months later, Rowena sets foot in the ancestral house to pay her last respects. At the wake, Rowena realizes that, like Andy, she has never belonged and decides to leave Jess. She realigns herself with normal procedures by getting married while Jess and her sisters move on with life. The story is told in three segments, each segment told from a different sister's viewpoint. Attached to each segment are social occasions popularly observed in the Philippines, each with a symbolic motif represented by the elements sun, fire, water, air, blood, moon, and earth. With Rowena's wedding at the end of the film, as in Grace's wedding at the start, a full cycle of life has transpired.

A young man tries to make some money so he can marry his girlfriend. He takes a job for $2,000 and then realizes that this job involves killing a woman.

Iliac works in a massage parlor where the gay clients are given more than a shoulder kneading and back rub. When Iliac's father dies he must reconcile his job as a sex worker with the rest of his family.

A young TV-news presenter and his producer end up bringing evil into their own homes when they cover a case of demonic possession.

The Pineda family struggles with bigamy, unwanted pregnancy, possible incest, and skin irritations in a dilapidated movie theater.

An infertile midwife and her husband find a surrogate mother so that they can have a child.

From Filipino bad-boy director Brillante Mendoza comes Slingshot, an exhilarating portrayal of teenage thugs and petty thieves, all out to get what they can in the teeming slums of Asia's notorious city of sin, Manila.