Directing
JHUNNIFER juggles multiple odd jobs but never ends her day with enough for a livable lifestyle. When a “stable” job opportunity finally appears, she’s stopped by one requirement: a valid ID. What follows is a brutal, absurd journey that requires her to cross seas and climb mountains, revealing how the web of the system keeps people like her running in circles—with nothing to show for it.
This is an official entry for the TobaccOFF Now! Film Festival, and a part of the 51st Metro Manila Film Festival program. Mira is a young girl who idolizes her older brother and believes his breath creates magic that make flowers bloom.
Karatig-Tubig follows the life of Jerry & Carmelita Gervacio, a mussel farmer and mussel cleaner raising four children in a stilt house above the waters of Bacoor Bay, reachable only by boat. As large-scale reclamation and dredging projects advance around their community, the water that sustains them grows increasingly polluted, making their life more precarious. Caught between displacement and survival, they cling to their livelihood yet yearns for a better future.
A short ethnographic documentary that explores how Filipino workers in Israel, most of whom are caregivers, were able to create a community in one of the most obscure places in Tel Aviv, the Central Bus Station, locally known as the “Ha’TaChana Ha’Merkazit.” In this little Filipino center, thousands of OFWs find solace among each other, as they sacrifice for their families back home to care for strangers.
Bullet-laced Dreams follows the Lumad children in Mindanao as they escape from military rule due to the incessant armed conflicts between the government & communist rebels. Rising tensions pushed these kids to transfer from place to place just to continue their schooling. The conflicts separated 14-year old Chricelyn Empong from her family, but she vows to fight for her right. In the evacuation site, Chricelyn & her classmates continue studying and protest for the end of martial law so they could go to back to their homeland. She says the only way to regain their way of life is to defend their right to education.
The long-standing conflict between the military forces and the rebel group Abu Sayaff has severely ravaged the poor town of Patikul in Sulu. Residents have become so accustomed to the armed clashes, that reports of kidnappings and recruitment of young Tausugs to join the rebel groups already became normal news to them. However, Amman, a 33 year old coffee farmer in Sitio Kan-Ague, continues to believe that there is still hope for their town. Amman believes that educating his children would change their present situation.
A 73-year-old woman is physically and emotionally exhausted from caring for her ailing husband who is already in the last stage of his Alzheimer's Disease. He lives in a constant state of confusion and anxiety, occasionally haunted by visions of both faceless and familiar strangers. The wife's frustration and loneliness grows daily as she comes to terms with both her husband's deteriorating state and her own mortality.
The film documents a filmmaker’s experience with his father’s death due to Alzheimer’s disease. Taken from a personal perspective, the filmmaker gives a first-hand look at how his family dealt with his father’s worsening Alzheimer’s disease and eventual death, leading him to realizations about memory, familial relationships, and his own mortality. The film delves into the importance of memories in the human experience – how the ability to remember makes us feel alive, how its power can hold us, and how memory gives us what we need to feel and be human.
