Nocebo 2022
A fashion designer suffers from a mysterious illness that puzzles her doctors and frustrates her husband until help arrives in the form of a Filipino carer who uses traditional folk healing to reveal a horrifying truth.
A fashion designer suffers from a mysterious illness that puzzles her doctors and frustrates her husband until help arrives in the form of a Filipino carer who uses traditional folk healing to reveal a horrifying truth.
Stranded in the Philippines during World War II, a young girl finds that her duty to protect her dying mother is complicated by her misplaced trust in a beguiling, flesh-eating fairy.
A woman struggling to meet airline baggage requirements meets a man who comes to her aid. They form a friendship that helps them mend each other's hearts.
A starstruck girl sneaks into an actor’s house and discovers a horrifying truth about her idol.
Andres Bonifacio y de Castro is considered to be one of the most influential proponents in the struggle against Spanish colonial rule in the Philippines during the late nineteenth century. Bonifacio’s widow is searching for her husband’s missing dead body; as she and her followers stumble deeper into the jungle, they become entangled in the dense thicket of their own guilt and responsibility. The Spanish governor tries to play off the various rebel factions and their utopian visions against each other. At the same time, a badly wounded companion of Bonifacio reflects upon the victims a revolution inevitably creates. Mythology, facts and a vibrant sense of history merge.
A department store saleslady has had enough of being an underdog. One night, she discovers a peculiar-looking gun right on her doorstep. Her life drastically changes as she discovers how much power owning a gun can give her.
Sonya, an old maid, is about to give up on herself until, one day, she meets a corpse in her family's embalming business that changes her life.
At night, Manila’s red light Burgos district starts shining and its shops get busy welcoming tourists and women from different countries. The life of Tuesday, Amanda and Barbie is also here. Providing sexual services, the three transgender women are close friends. Tuesday hopelessly longs for romantic love. Wise Amanda visits her hometown to attend her ex-girlfriend’s son’s christening. She told her family that she works for a bank and her parents have been renovating their home with her money. To her parents, she is a great son or daughter. To her friends, she is an object of both envy and temptation. Recklessly ambitious Barbie tries to make money through drug dealing, but she feels threatened by dangers hidden everywhere. Pursuing love, success and dreams, their lives become part of a confusing night.
In the cold west, Motel Acacia is tasked with exterminating immigrants by the government through a BED, haunted with the spirit of a Filipino tree demon, that eats men and impregnates women. A young Filipino man, JC, is groomed by his tyrannical caucasian Father to take over the business.
In the wake of her husband's death, Chedeng, 66, decides to come out of the closet. Her best friend Apple, 63, beheads her live-in partner in a fit of rage. Bound by friendship, the two elderly women, together with the severed head placed inside a Louis Vuitton bag, set off an adventure to find Chedeng's ex-girlfriend.
In the late 70s, a gang of militias, under the control of the military, terrorizes a remote village in the Philippines. The terror being inflicted on the populace is not just corporal but intensely psychological as well. They were constantly fed with apocryphal tales about the village leader. A few souls are not giving up. They are fighting. The poet/teacher/activist, Hugo Haniway, decides to find out the truth about the disappearance of his wife. A love story set in the darkest period of Philippine history, the Marcos Dictatorship. The narrative and the characters are a composite of real events and real people that happened and existed during the period. A Filipino rock opera.
Moon Lee, a celebrated award-winning actress, has become a full-time mom and divorcée since retiring. Desperate to regain her sense of self, she jumps at the chance to work with her long-time collaborator, director Roger Woo, again. Only this time, he casts her as the lead in a do-your-own stunts martial arts film. The role requires extensive training and though Moon is at first uncertain, she leaves her young son in the care of Roger’s assistant and commits herself to back-breaking training. As soon as she starts to gain some confidence, Roger breaks the news to her: the only way the film can move ahead is to cast her ex-husband, Julliard, as the male lead.
Teban, a troubled teen who recently got out of jail for petty theft, moves to tenement 66 with his older brother Tony and cousin Ron-ron, hoping to start a new life away from the people who influenced him to commit crimes. But soon find out that there are far more sinister figures at the tenement whose crimes are worse than they could have imagined.
Andrés Bonifacio, the freedom fighter known as the father of the Philippine revolution, was executed by rival revolutionaries in 1897. His wife, Gregoria de Jesus, searched for his body in the mountains for 30 days. It was never found.
After his mother dies suddenly, Samuel goes into a mysterious cave that claims to grant wishes and asks for his mother’s life back.
Lieutenant Hermes Papauran, one of the best investigators of the Philippines, is at a deep moral crossroad. As a member of the police forces, he is a first-hand witness of the murderous anti-drug campaign that his institution is implementing with dedication. The atrocities are corroding Hermes physically and spiritually, causing him a severe skin disease resulting from anxiety and guilt. As he tries to heal, a dark past haunts him and has eventually come back for a reckoning.
In Avenida, the lives of four men intertwine, searching for something. They all find what they are looking for in one woman named Aileen.
Tia Madre is a horror story told through the eyes of a child: a clingy, hyper-imaginative and slightly twisted 10-year old girl named Camille whose mother Emilia inexplicably changes into something else, something more sinister, something more violent, something more distant, something that isn’t her mother anymore and quite possibly isn’t human.
During a trip to the Philippines, middle-aged Norwegian Lars has met the Filipina he wants to share his life with, but to his surprise she turns him down. Lars now has to face his own prejudices and deal with this uncomfortable situation.
In the near future, Manila is an almost-utopian city, but they still believe in ghost stories. Nobody survives the mysterious blackouts that happen in random parts of the city after midnight. Nobody believes the horrors in its darkness are even real. Four friends are about to find out that you don’t need to believe, for it to come for you.