Marathon Watching Cinemalaya 2025

Cinemalaya entries present Filipino stories that appeal to progressive filmgoers.

Stories were collected from entries screened using a process.

Produced and interpreted into a film of either full length or shorts.

Each entry fills out a variety of themes.

Viewed for their tale, appreciated, and evaluated for their production value.

Finally as a festival goer, valued for its personal impact and the insights realized.

What did not I know? What had been validated? What was reinforced?

Clusters guided me in ranking.

Something Lost:

• Drive: Raging. Hydra. Open Endings. Please Keep Copy
• Dignity: Warla. 24H. Radikals. Blooms. Ocean. Paglilitis. Tugbaw. Ascension
• Land: Bloom. Republic. Water Sports
• Justice: Paglilitis. Republic
• Family: Child. Padamlagan
• History: Cinemartyrs. Ocean

Gained:

• Hope: Hydra. Bloom
• Respect: Warla. Child. Objects
• Self: Open Endings. Raging. Hydra. Best Left. Hasang. Please Keep Copy
• History: Cinemartyrs. Figat
• Fatherhood: Padamlagan. Child

Between gained and lost is the denouncement dramatised

Based on the synopses for the 10 full-length and 10 short films competing in Cinemalaya 2025, several recurring and powerful thematic clusters can be identified.

These clusters reflect the festival's theme, "Layag sa Alon, Hangin, at Unos" (To sail through waves, wind, and storms), highlighting resilience, social struggle, and evolving identities in the Philippines.

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Cluster 1: Political and Historical Reckoning, Truth vs. Disinformation

These films directly address critical socio-political issues, historical atrocities, the struggle for land and rights, and the current battle against disinformation.

1. Habang Nilalamon ng Hydra ang Kasaysayan (As the Hydra Devours History). Disinformation, erosion of truth/memory, post-political defeat struggle.
2. Bloom Where You Are Planted. Land rights activists, red-tagging, volatile notions of home, and government pursuit.
3. Cinemartyrs. Recreating forgotten historical massacres, angry spirits, and the peril of truth-telling
4. Padamlagan (Night Light). Colgante Bridge collapse and the declaration of Martial Law (Historical/Political backdrop).
5. Republika ng Pipolipinas (Republic of Pipolipinas). Farmer protests government land grab by building a micronation (Act of political defiance)
6. Please Keep This Copy. High school students navigating control and repression in an elite all-boys school (Youth resistance to authority)

Cluster 2: Marginalized Identities, Belonging, and LGBTQIA+ Narratives

This cluster focuses on the experiences of marginalized groups, the search for acceptance and family, and bold repress entations of queer identity.

1. Warla. Transgender woman Kitkat find ing family in a gang that kidnaps men for gender-affirming surgeries (Trans identity, survival, belonging)
2. Open Endings. Four queer women (exes-turned-best-friends) navigating adulthood and chosen family (Sapphic relationships, love, and friendship)
3. Raging. A young man's quest for truth and justice after being raped by a peer (Sexual abuse, isolation, confronting the abuser)
4. Water Sports . Two deeply in love sad boys preparing to survive a world devastated by climate change (Gay male relationship, love as survival)
5. I'm Best Left Inside My Head. Golden boy adopted by gay philanthropists reunites with friends from the orphanage (Identity, adoption, found family)
6. The Next 24 Hours. Young woman navigating a cold, bureaucratic system after sexual assault (Victim's struggle for justice, systemic trauma)
7. Paglilitis (A Trial). Former executive assistant filing a sexual harassment case against a rich and powerful boss (Sexual harassment, workplace abuse, legal battle for justice)

Cluster 3: Folkloric, Mythic, and Fantastical Elements

These entries incorporate elements of magic realism, fantasy, and folklore to explore deeper themes of culture, environment, and personal transformation.

1. Hasang (Gills). Young boy witnesses his grandmother slowly transforming into a tilapia (Body transformation, folklore, family mystery)
2. Kay Basta Angkarabo Yay Bagay Ibat ha Langit (Objects Do Not Randomly Fall from the Sky). Young girl turns into a fish and recounts the effects of China's territorial aggression on fisherfolk (Environmental struggle, transformation, folklore)
3. Child No. 82 (Son of Boy Kana). Student must prove he is the 82nd child of a deceased action-fantasy movie star (Paternity, legacy, fantasy element in a dramedy setup)

Cluster 4: Personal Struggle, Labor, and Psychological Toll

This final group focuses on individual characters coping with systemic pressures, economic hardship, and the psychological impact of their daily lives or past trauma.

1. Ascension from the Office Cubicle. Exploited call center agent's obsession with a TV host as an escape from monotony/exploitation (Labor, workplace oppression, escapism)
2. Kung Tugnaw Ang Kaidalman Sang Lawod. Debt-stricken seafarer senses an unknown presence after taking a superior's help (Debt, exploitation, psychological burden)
3. Figat (Tomorrow). Young Kalinga girl brings a handmade instrument to class to inspire a return to cultural pride (Technology vs. Tradition, cultural identity).
4. Radikals. A young dancer's disastrous performance leads to bizarre events (Self-doubt, public embarrassment, and personal transformation/crisis)

#CCPCinemalaya2025 #Cinemalaya2025

Quezon Movie

In around two hours or so, the silver screen at Gateway in Quezon City revealed the character and driver to fame of a man I barely knew.

I know that a city in Metro Manila and a province in Southern Luzon are named after him. He was buried at the elliptical circle monument, a national landmark. Countless streets, boulevards, avenues, and law school buildings around the country are named after him.

Historically, the academe has exposed me to his connotations; his name comes up when the Commonwealth and Americans are mentioned, a dreadful lung disease, and the national language.

The film #Quezon, created by Jerrold Tarog and Rody Vera, introduced me to a politician with a great plan, a dominant alpha man with strong leadership, charisma, and the ability to control the flow of Philippine politics.

Halfway through, it reduced an educated, English-speaking Filipino nationalist to a human being with a superiority complex who projected himself as a man in control and with the power to reshape the country in the name of nationalism.

Set in the 1920s, with such abilities, power, and determination, it is inconceivable what he can do at the expense of rivals, colleagues, friends, allies, colonizers and especially adversaries. (In today's landscape, this a regular and now the norm.)

He is cunning and manipulative: sending Roxas to the US for a concession, revised Tydings-McDuffie Act to claim credit, sweet talking Sergio Osmena Sr. Governor General Leonard Wood, running for a 2nd term reneging his promise, campaign against E. Aguinaldo among others.

Tarog and Vera worked together to effectively uncover these in the well-crafted film: great lead and ensemble, production value, engaging story telling of a layered and complex situation.

While the film established that his objective was to free the Philippines from American dependency through a hazy platform of independence, it also implied that he did it for power and the ongoing enjoyment of it.

Tragically, despite his accomplishment with his goals and missions, he lived his later years with failing health and ungratefulness toward the nation and his cronies. What a dramatic ending as he is seated in a chair pushed toward the tunnel shouting expletives.

MLQ went through a cycle of successive successes and failure, calculated rise and fall, which is an unbroken cycle of humanity that has yet to be unraveled. There is no forever. A number of popular figures have ubdergone the same fate.

Beyond, the names of places and concretes put up for him to immortalize the man Quezon, Tarog, and Vera in one sitting, elevated him in living color to a pedestal before dropping him like any other mortal seeking affirmation.

What does all of this teach us? Beyond the historical context and the grandeur of his name, the film on Manuel L. Quezon offers a profound, humanizing lesson on power, purpose, and the inevitable cycle of life.

The central insight is exceptional drive often walks together with deep seated human flaws. Quezon’s story from the creator's view shows that a towering national objective achieving independence can be fueled not just by pure patriotism, but also by a relentless, even obsessive, desire for personal power and control (lust too).

His alpha dominance and charisma were the tools of his political genius, but they were also the source of his complexes and ultimately, the isolation and resentment he experienced as his health failed.

In the end, the most enduring takeaway is a simple, universal truth: No mortal can maintain a prime disposition indefinitely. Quezon's journey from a political titan shaping a nation's destiny to a sick, embittered man facing his own mortality perfectly illustrates the unbroken cycle of human existence: success gives way to failure, and the ascent is inevitably followed by the fall.

Because of his death in the US, he did not experience 1st hand the fruit of what he lobbied for.

The concrete monuments in his name seek to immortalize him, but the film and his life remind us that even the greatest heroes are just human beings seeking affirmation before they are finally "dropped like any other mortal."

This film doesn't just teach history; it teaches a difficult truth about the cost of ambition and the humility that awaits us all. It's a powerful reminder to seek not just glory, but grace, recognizing that one's legacy is defined not only by what you build, but how you handle its eventual erosion.

Film Quezon may have exposed that the kind of politics we have now dates back to then.