Noel Vera's 100 Best Filipino Films

A man has 48 hours to find the men who wronged him before a bullet lodged in his chest reaches his heart.

This is the story of a peasant woman who is a victim of love and oppression: a servant seduced and impregnated by her employer, who has had difficulty conceiving with his neurosurgeon wife.

A vigilante is hunting down criminal elements in the streets of Manila.

Julian's wife was raped when she protested his arrest, and later gives birth to a son. When the son dares to love the daughter of a wealthy Spaniard, he is hunted down.

A black comedy set in the semi-futuristic Philippines that now has a Ministry of Entertainment. To be able to find employment, one must not only possess the necessary skills, but to be entertaining as well.

Anton is a former boxer who retired upon accidentally killing an opponent in the ring during a prizefight in the U.S. Returning to the Philippines, he finds himself destitute and jobless. He is hired by a mysterious foreman named Erning who assigns him and a companion named Lope to renovate a lone, decrepit house on a hill at the outskirts of Metro Manila. While working in relative isolation in the house, an apparition of a ghostly child appears to Anton seeking his help to release her from the clutches of a demonic-looking entity dressed in a cloak and mask, who enslaves the little girl inside the second-story room of the house. Despite specific instructions not to open the locked basement door of the house, the mischievous Lope's insatiable curiosity leads him to do the exact opposite. He inspects the contents of that peculiar cellar of the home. Standing against a corner wall of the room, he finds a large antique wooden altar on top of which is the carved bust of a strange dark woman, eyes shut, seemingly in peaceful prayer. One creepy event leads to another. The men make the acquaintance of a pair of pretty maids, Angie and Giselle, who work for one of the neighborhood's other households. Anton and Angie quickly develop a budding romance and he solicits her help to unlock the ghostly house's strange and dark mystery. Little does Anton know that his arrival in the house was never sheer coincidence, but the deliberate, nefarious plan of a mysterious figure doing the bidding of a truly terrifying and evil force. Bloodcurdling events occur, one after the other, till all these snowball towards a violent climax.

A war hero meets a prostitute in the postwar ruins of Manila.

A former school teacher leads a movement to fight for the rights of the working class.

In a poor village by the Manila Bay breakwater, brothers Buboy and Basilio come to the city to escape from the violence at home. They meet a prostitute named Pakita and become close with her when Basilio treats her wounds. All they want is to lead normal lives, but the town's leader Dave has knavish interruptions that await them.

A newly-wed movie stuntman and his wife resides in a cemetery where they become aquainted with an assortment of characters.

This documentary takes a hard look at the facts about the Filipina domestic, an Overseas Contract Worker (OCW) hanged in Singapore for the murder of her friend and fellow OCW, the nursemaid Della Maga. It documents Flor's accusation, confession, four years spent in prison, the lack of quality defensive support from the Philippine government and subsequent inaction when new evidence raised doubt about her guilt and the suggestion that Maga may have been killed by her employer. The chilling story is told with a combination of dramatic reenactment and documentary footage.

Born into poverty, Addon Labrador (Dan Alvaro), a tugboat worker, embarks on a life-threatening journey when his genial presence is shattered by his mother's sudden illness. Damaged and burdened by a huge hospital bill, he reluctantly agrees to participate in a death game that offers a substantial amount of money to the winner. Defeating his opponent only infuriates Rex (Joel Torre).

It was almost a perfect love, but a love doomed from the start--a love that society would never understand.

A teen's murder investigation in NJ reveals insights into Filipino-American life, crystal meth's impact on youth, and a detective's struggle with his past trauma.

The lives of seven neophytes as they strive to enter a Greek letter fraternity through a difficult hazing process. The entire experience is seen through the eyes of Sid Lucero, one of the neophytes.

An apolitical worker in a printing press who works as a scab during a company strike belatedly realizes that everyone is affected by the evils of society.

A tale about the rise, fall and resurection of the "Katipunan" and its Supremo. A semi-biography of Philippine hero Andres Bonifacio.

Part-investigative documentary, part-satire and shot entirely in black-and-white, the film tackles the mystery that surrounds the life and death of the Filipino hero, Jose Rizal.

Mike de Leon screen adaptation of John Fowles' creepy film The Collector.

A young married couple, Maria and Jose (Rosa Rosal and Tony Santos) start life together creating a lanzones orchard in the countryside. They have four children - Miguel (Leroy Salvador), Arturo (Carlos Padilla Jr), Angelita (Marita Zobel), and Lito (Danilo Jurado). The eldest, Miguel, is a deaf-mute. Life is good to them and the children grow up and bring joy to the community. But trouble enters their lives when Jose makes an enemy of Bruno (Joseph de Cordova). Bruno, a widower, is much feared in the village, for it is rumored that he caused the death of his wife. And yet he wants to remarry and is courting Choleng (Mila Ocampo), Jose's niece. But Choleng avoids Bruno and one day, in trying to get away from him, she slips and falls off a cliff and dies. The village is outraged and Bruno hides in the mountains. There, he plots his revenge on the village, particularly on Jose's family.

A boatman wants more than just paddle his canoe for tourists in his town famed for its waterfalls. He moves to Manila, and lands a job as a live-sex performer, and his partner sees in him a way out of the slums and the red light district.

A WORKING WIFE, A PRODUCTION ASSISTANT IN A TELEVISION NETWORK, AND A JOURNALIST SUCCUMB TO THE PRESSURES AND DEMANDS OF THEIR CAREERS AND GIVE UP ON THEIR MARRIAGE.

The story of a woman named Angela who was accused of aggravated murder finds herself in difficult desperate situation inside prison while meeting different kinds of women who were penalized for different kinds of crimes. She soon finds out that she is pregnant and escapes the prison to deliver her baby, but when the police realize that she's gone, they chase after her, and when they find her, to their surprise she is delivering her baby in a zoo.

To support her paralytic father, Chato works as a utility girl for a burlesque star Virgie Nite. But when Virgie gets drunk on the night of her scheduled show, Chato pitches in for her. And she becomes an instant sensation. Enthused by the initial acceptance of the audience, she defies her father's admonitions and presents herself to the manager. And thus, becoming the new burlesque queen.