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“P77,” GMA Pictures’ summer offering, may understandably become a polarizing film. Released through GMA Public Affairs’ film division, one would expect the movie to carry some concern over the social responsibility of the media, and, like their 2024 offering, “Green Bones,” would loop back to some didactic end. Initially slated for a 2023 release, its early promotional materials said that it was a film about the horrors of homelessness in a city of ghettos and skyscrapers. The final result shifted towards something else.

Barbie Forteza plays Luna, a daughter in a family facing precarity, who signed up to work on a cruise ship. Her employment was cut short as she rushed back home after learning of a medical emergency involving her sickly younger brother, Jonas (Euwenn Mikaell). With her mother missing in action, Luna takes matters into her own hands to work again for her family. She then finds out about Penthouse 77,...

Which issues lead humanity to its most extreme actions?

For filmmakers, that may be one of the most important questions that there is. They have thoroughly explored every possible answer, reproducing the most important things they have experienced and studied to find them. They found it in romance, revenge, hatred, gods, redemption, power, justice, survival, just to name a few. Among the many answers, however, one in particular frames every aspect of humankind in perhaps the most severe, compassionate, and transparent of ways: War. The perpetration of it. The ideology of it. The tragedy of it.

“Three Years Without God”, the feature debut of writer/director Mario O’Hara, is as thorough an examination of the repercussions of war as any film can be. Made amidst an economically and politically tumultuous time in Philippine cinema history, the production was as much an act of dissent as it was a statement in favor of it.

In a bid to celebrate and preserve Philippine cinema’s rich heritage, Ayala Malls Cinemas has launched “A Rewind,” a special initiative in partnership with the Abs-cbn Film Archives and Restoration. The program brings restored Filipino film classics back to the big screen, offering audiences a chance to relive these cinematic treasures in their full glory.

Starting this April, moviegoers can experience timeless Filipino films at select Ayala Malls Cinemas, including Ayala Malls The 30th, Ayala Malls Cloverleaf, Ayala Malls Fairview Terraces, Ayala Malls MarQuee Mall, and Ayala Malls Legazpi. The initiative is designed to make these classics more accessible, with special ticket prices of P180 for regular moviegoers and P160 for students upon presentation of a valid school ID.

The inaugural screenings of “A Rewind” will run from April 9 to 13, featuring two acclaimed films: “Kailan Ka Magiging Akin” (1991), directed by Chito S. Roño and starring Janice de Belen, Gabby Concepcion,...

Vesoul Unveils Asian Lineup

The Vesoul International Film Festival of Asian Cinema has unveiled its 85-title lineup for the edition that starts later this month. Elements include a 10-film competition section, a 10-film documentary film section, a tribute to the Turkish director Semih Kaplanoglu; a thematic section “Asian Diaspora Cinema” offering a panorama of works by directors from Asian countries living in exile; and a Philippines cinema sidebar.

Fiction films in competition include: Azerbaijan’s “Cold as Marble,” by Asif Rustamov; China’s “In Our Prime,” by Liu Yulin; Korea’s “A Letter from Kyoto,” by Kim Min-ju; India’s: “Behind Veils,” by Praveen Morshhale; Iran’s “No End,” by Nader Saievar; Mongolia’s “The Sales Girl,” by Sengedorj Janchivdorj; The Philippines’s “Feast,” by Brillante Mendoza; Singapore’s “#LookAtMe,” by Ken Kwek; and Vietnam’s “Memento Mori: Earth,” by Marcus Vu Manh Cuong. The president of the jury is Lee Yong-kwan,...

“Insiang” is a landmark for Filipino cinema. It was the first film to be shown at the Cannes Film Festival, the first to be shot in the slums of Tondo, in Manila, while in 2015, Martin Scorsese’s The Film Foundation picked it for restoration, with the new version playing again in Cannes among a number of other festivals. Furthermore, Lamberto Antonio (occasionally mentioned as the Philippine Salvatore Quasimodo), one of the scriptwriters is considered one of the best Filipino poets, while Mario O’Hara, the other one, was also a successful director who directed a theater version of the film some years later (info courtesy of Khavn).

Poverty, misery, drunkenness, and gambling rule the shanty town of Tondo, where people barely make a living through mostly odd jobs. Insiang is one of the few exceptions of true beauty in this setting, although her life is by no means easier due to the fact.

Mubi is proud to present the first-ever online retrospective of renowned Filipino auteur Lav Diaz. To give audiences the proper time to spend immersed in Diaz’s cinema, Mubi will debut one film each month during the retrospective.Illustration by Leah BravoFilmmaker Lavrente Indico Diaz, named after Soviet statesman Lavrentiy Beria (1899-1953), was born on December 30th 1958 in the municipality of Datu Paglas, province of Maguindanao, Mindanao Island, Southern Philippines. The son of a fervently Catholic woman from the Visayas (Central Philippines) and a Socialist intellectual from Ilocos (Northern Philippines) who, firmly believing that education is the key to improve Man's condition, devoted their lives to schooling peasants in the poorest, remotest Maguindanao villages, Diaz has always had an utilitarian conception of culture and, by extension, of all forms of artistic expression. To Diaz, art should not be an end to itself, a purely formalist exercise, but—to paraphrase a...

When a film is described as poetic, it is often taken as a compliment. However, when a film is described as theatrical, it is seen as a critique, scathing at that. What makes poetry the better spouse to cinema? Isn't cinema but a visual and aural interplay of poetry and theater to begin with? Theater provides the cornerstones: the narrative, the milieu, the setting and the characters. Poetry, on the other hand, more than the façade and the flourishes, provides the requisite subtlety in the execution --- the minute gestures that accentuate a character, that last five seconds of absolute silence before a cut, the symbols, the verses, the rhymes, and rhythms. This is purely hypothetical. But if films are judged based on a balance where theatricality is measured with poetry, and the former outweighs the latter by a large margin, does it mean that the film is better off staged than filmed?...