Romulo Caballero

The Chanters is a comedy-drama film about Sarah Mae, a 12 year old school girl, the grand-daughter of the last chanter of the Panay Bukidnon tribe. She obsesses with pop culture and readies herself for the visit of a sensational TV star to her school. As she perfects her dance, her grandfather, Lolo Ramon suffers the onset of dementia. As her Lolo starts losing his precious memories, Sarah Mae is tasked to help him complete the last of the remaining 12 epics, their tribe’s vanishing tradition.

One bonfire-lit evening, Amang Baoy, an elderly Panay Bukidnon man, consoles his son, Rohan, by narrating through chant, a portion of the Suguidanon, an epic of the Indigenous Panay Bukidnon people of the Philippines, about love and resurrection. In an expression of hope and celebration, Amang Baoy imparts the Visayan hawk dance binanog to Rohan as they reminisce scenes from their Indigenous life.