Che Villanueva

Best friends Sam and George treat each other as sisters, but later on, their friendship is ruined. Both of them eventually find love, but unbeknownst to the two, they are marrying two men who belong to the same family, the Palacios.

In a remote town full of secrets and mysteries, a young man faces controversy after his secret relationship with a politician’s daughter is exposed. He must confront harsh consequences filled with deception, revenge, and unexplained events.

The film follows a young boy's search for the mythical island of fireflies described in his mother's bedtime stories. Using the "clues" he believes his mother left behind in an old notebook, the boy makes the long journey to the magical island to wish her back to life.

A soon-to-be released criminal and a corrections officer is still grieving over the death of his sister opposing the prisoner's release.

After three decades' wrongful incarceration for murder, a woman discovers that her friend and fellow inmate committed the murder of which she was accused. This leads to her release and subsequent discovery of the man who framed her — her ruling class ex-lover.

The Philippines, 1972. Mysterious things are happening in a remote barrio. Wails are heard from the forest, cows are hacked to death, a man is found bleeding to death at the crossroad, and houses are burned. Ferdinand E. Marcos announces Proclamation No. 1081, putting the entire country under Martial Law.

Bonn, West Germany, 1974, in the middle of the Cold War. Young government official Sophie Zimmermann is being hunted and the only way to survive is to find out the identity of the man she knows as Dieter.

Thida, the spirit guardian of an old cinema facing demolition, must confront her existence as a ghost and the choice of rebirth. When she meets Hai, a living human with whom she forms a deep bond, their connection forces her to face not only her spiritual destiny but also the realities of a country undergoing profound economic and social change.

"In His Mother's Eyes" follows the story of Tim, a special child who was left in the care of his uncle Bibs by his working mother Lucy for several years. When Lucy returns, she attempts to regain the affection of her son and brother. Unfortunately, it is not as easy as she thought. Despite her best efforts to make up for her absence, her attempts fail and only make things worse.

An observation of post-colonial economic relations through the intersecting trajectories of two Filipino women: one preparing to leave her native island to work as a domestic in Europe, the other to return for good.

Jungle Love follows a handful of people who have disappeared into the jungle: a woman who has kidnapped her sister's child; an urbane couple and their indigenous guide; a bored and horny platoon; and a nameless tribe. Disappearance has another meaning in Sanchez’s native Mindanao, where a decades-old conflict between the government and secessionists fighting for an Islamic state has made the region infamous for its kidnappings. Sanchez took inspiration from an incident in which a friend living abroad visited an exhibition, and found a photo of him labeled as one of the disappeared. Jungle Love is permeated with this sense of the uncanny, as narratives and identities fracture and fuse into one another in the reckless, lonely places people go to escape themselves.

A father and daughter tandem (both exceptional scallop divers) sold a clam allegedly containing a pearl worth millions. Blinded by his insatiable desire to find another gem of the same worth, the father makes thoughtless decisions compromising the only thing worth holding his breath for–his daughter.

Sarah is a debt collector who lives among the inhabitants of the village of Guimbal on the island of Panay. She wants to find the young man who appeared to her in a dream and goes to the island of Negros. Here, as she interacts with the inhabitants, Sarah continues her search, gathering memories of life and war, dreams, myths, legends, songs and stories that she takes part in and at times revolve around her. She is the daughter of an ancient mermaid, a revolutionary, a primordial element, a virgin who was kidnapped and hidden away from the sunlight. “The film is a retelling of fragments of the American occupation. Dialogue, shot in the Hiligaynon language, is not translated but used as a tonal guide and a tool for narration. Using unscripted scenes shot where the main character was asked to merely interact with the villagers, I discard dialogue and draw meaning from peoples’ faces, voices, and actions, weaving an entirely different story through the use of subtitles and inter-titles.”

"Mapang-akit" is an offshoot of a documentary project made with an Icelandic filmmaker and uses the outtakes from the Hudas Hudas festival in Antique, where a community bonds over a large effigy of Judas Iscariot during Holy Week. Amidst it is a found story of a man who returns home to his death after pursuing a woman in a neighboring village.