SARI-SARING SINENG PINOY

     In Beast (Puregold Cine Panalo, Pelikulaw, 2026), a luminous, oddball odyssey directed by Law Fajardo, a 65-year old farmer and his talking carabao journeys from Pulilan to Manila to reunite with his long lost niece. Fajardo's road movie, traveling two-lane highways dares to be direct as it is leisurely; to be sweet in it's celebration of Filipino generosity, where people still extend kindness to strangers; and to be ardent and tender in its portrait of old age. Except for a few interludes along the way, Beast seems a far cry from the man renowned for mesmerizing audiences with unnerving surrealism. In doing so, he has made the most deeply affecting film of his career -- how's that for a neat irony? -- and has given audiences a gift of enduring beauty. Fajardo and cinematographer Albert Banzon have crafted a hauntingly lovely mise-en-scene. John Arcilla is cast perfectly as Lolo Omeng, delivering a sublimely natural performance that skews terse but is always warm, polite and on occasion, very powerful. His zestful spirit backlights the hero's weathered face, full of wary expectancy and sustains notes of love and hope -- and firm resolve -- in his reedy voice. Ruslan Jacob grounded the film's emotional core as Pepe, a young kid with aspirations of becoming a comics writer and illustrator. Since the movie rests on such a peculiar vehicular premise, it's fair to ask why Lolo Omeng can't take a bus or ask for a ride. The answer has less to do with practicality than with dogged determination, he wants to do it his own way, which means the hard way. It's also fair to ask if Lolo Omeng reaches the end of the road in time to make peace with his niece, Marietta (Candy Pangilinan). Suffice it to say that the climax is worthy of the journey, a scene of perfect tact and exquisite intensity. And what a journey it is. Lolo Omeng has all kinds of old-fashioned wisdom at his fingertips. He meets lots of different people along the way and everyone is immediately taken with him, just as we, the audience are. 

     Lolo Omeng's most powerful encounter is with Yna (Sol Samodio), a young girl who is a pregnant runaway, listens to his stories about family and heads back home. The screenplay by Jim Flores finds truth in the exact choice of the right everyday words. Arcilla, speaks the lines with perfect repose and conviction. He conveys emotional nuance and intelligence throughout his performance, especially in his eyes. It’s not Lolo Omeng's tears causing the narrative payoff, but rather his almost tears, the buildup before the break. Arcilla captures the spirit of a man who lived in hardship but hopes to make things right with his niece. Lolo Omeng's journey to Marietta is a journey into his past. Beast quietly charts the pains of time’s passing and what the idea of a family means in both its potential for joy and for sorrow. The film’s moods shift easily from melancholy to glimpses of fleeting contentment in very ordinary situations and Lolo Omeng’s evident gladness at being alone. The device of Pepe being able to shape Lolo Omeng's world is integral to the key themes of the film. In an astonishing breaking of the fourth wall moment, the film goes one step further to directly appeal to the audience. After Lolo Omeng and Marietta's meeting, Bob the carabao (voiced by Lou Veloso), looks directly into the camera – appearing to look out into the audience – and tells Lolo Omeng, "all he had to do is follow where the sun sets." It’s a remarkable moment where the audience is directly informed that the story only exists because they are experiencing it and stories such as this can only survive by us engaging with them. Beast is still very Law Fajardo, with idiosyncratic characters, thoughtful compositions and Jobin Ballesteros' score setting the tone. Fajardo keeps the heartfelt core and emotional stakes but resolves rather than rejects catharsis. Lolo Omeng's trek is anchored by Arcilla’s performance, but through Law Fajardo’s lens, it transcends the screen and culminates in an earned, deeply human finale.

Directed and Edited By: Law Fajardo

Story and Screenplay: Jim Flores

Director of Photography: Albert Banzon

Production Designer: Ian Traifalgar

Music: Jobin Ballesteros

Sound: Alex Tomboc, Lamberto Casas

     Rafael Manuel's Filipiñana (Film4, Protocol, Ossian International, Epicmedia, Easy Riders Films, Idle Eye, 2026) does wonderfully to manage a fine balancing act: the absurd jokes are funny, yet only rarely do they break the film’s unique pitch. The fictional country club is a decent bit in itself, but made far richer by the way Manuel leans into his conceit, granting some of his most delicate close-ups to quiet gestures. Manuel and Director of Photography Xenia Patricia pay careful attention to each scene’s composition, creating the world of Filipiñana shot by shot. Some of their scenes play out at a distance, one discussion between two men is made even more intense by a third character listening in. When the story calls for it, Manuel and Patricia also move their camera in to capture the subtle reactions of their actors. We experience Filipiñana through Clara (Carmen Castellanos), a privileged, light-skinned, and unyieldingly skeptical young woman whose Uncle Renato (Carlitos Siguion-Reyna) is desperate for her to move back to Manila. She talks to the caddies with respect, while repulsed by everything the club represents. Dr. Palanca (Teroy Guzman), the club President, takes pleasure in the many different ways that golf allows the rich to lord over the working class. The members don’t care about the game, but they love that it requires so much labor for them to enjoy. And then there's 17-year-old Isabel (Jorrybell Agoto), who recently moved from Ilocos and landed a job as the country club’s newest tee girl. Like a flight attendant in turquoise uniform, Isabel is forced to sit inches away from a backswing between strokes. She disappears into her character’s muted, internalized state, delivering an incredible performance that relies on subtle expressions and nonverbal communication. Manuel gave Agoto a unique opportunity to inhabit a character through full embodiment, though her dialogue is limited to banal exchanges with her co-worker, Janine (Nour Hooshmand) and with the few people she interacts with. 

     As disruptions increase in frequency, Agoto’s face begins to reveal her character’s panicked state; her body language grows uneasy and her breathing quickens. The anxiety becomes palpable through tense microexpressions. Manuel’s soundscape, rendered in Isabel’s quiet presence on the screen suddenly becomes louder as the character falls apart. Agoto maintains a blank stare at virtually all times. She acts as a tour guide showing us as the country club sweat out its sins. It’s a moment that Filipiñana has been preparing us for since well before her first scene, but it still feels abrupt in a way that undermines its power. Manuel's film encourages viewers to dig deeper and consider the nature of perspective, challenging expectations while also being comforted by the commonplace. His screenplay manages to dance between being scattershot and coherent, which is no small feat. Even when it indulges in more esoteric sweeps, it’s all done in ways that are never gratuitous. Filipiñana is astonishing in the amount of material it contains. It isn’t thin or superficial; there's an abundance of observation and invention here and perhaps because the filmmakers know they have so much good material, there’s never the feeling that anything is being punched up or made to carry more than its share. I was reminded of the films of Jacques Tati, in which, calmly, serenely, an endless series of dry comedy unfolds. But nothing here ever becomes lightweight, labored or insubstantial as one fears it might. The deadpan gags are always supported by genuine emotion, even if characters come off as a little stiff or robotic. Filipiñana is first and foremost a testament to the shared artifice of all filmic storytelling and to the singular realities it’s able to bring alive in turn. What Manuel is trying to achieve here is so beguiling and consistent throughout the movie that its various asides gather their own emotional weight. To watch Filipiñana is to feel as if you’ve been privileged to a brief and memorable peek.

Written & Directed By: Rafael Manuel

Director of Photography: Xenia Patricia

Production Designer: Tatjana Fanny Honegger

Editor: Rafael Manuel

Sound Design & Mix: Vincent Villa

     The irony of UnMarry (Quantum Films, Cineko Productions, 2025)  is that the story has more to do with the particulars of the annulment process — the way the intricate legalities unfold in bland meeting rooms and harsh courtroom exchanges at odds with the fragile circumstances. Over the course of 131 absorbing minutes, as the movie navigates Celine (Angelica Panganiban) and Stephen (Tom Rodriguez), and Ivan (Zanjoe Marudo) and Maya’s (Solenn Heusaff) clashing perspectives, UnMarry never preaches, it just presents a story. Director Jeffrey Jeturian doesn’t attempt to reconstruct the path toward annulment so much as the complex psychological turmoil it instigates for his protagonists. My favorite swath of the film is before Celine tentatively begins a friendship with charming artist, Ivan, whom she meets at her lawyer Jackie Lambridas' (Eugene Domingo) office. And despite some surprising bits of humor, UnMarry is very much a domestic drama. The chemistry between Panganiban and Marudo is palpable and engrossing. They have both been remarkable before, but this is a new career watermark for both, repaying Jeturian’s trust in them with emotional and complex work. UnMarry works beautifully and trenchantly is in no small part due to Panganiban’s extraordinarily emotionally honest performance. She's a tremendous, fine-tuned actor of wit and sincerity. What attracts me to this performance is its deceptive ease. Panganiban perfectly captures the roiling emotions of a woman having to define herself for the first time. She lets us into private moments without pretense or barriers, revealing the hidden hurts and textures of Celine’s psyche. Her feelings of shrinking into invisibility and feeling like nothing more than a vessel for Stephen is at the root of her unhappiness. She admits to getting caught up in his spark but has come to discover over time that the facade was nothing more than narcissism and control disguised as charisma. Marudo takes chances in this movie. He’s out on an emotional limb. He’s letting us see and experience things that many actors simply couldn’t reveal. Ivan, blinded to the realities of his personal life, feels gaslighted by Maya’s decision to involve Atty. Grace Agravante (Angel Aquino) to overcomplicate already complicated matters. But people are complicated and UnMarry is sensitive to the fact that people evolve over time and not always together. 

     The two leads own the film, but Jeturian’s skill with ensemble has become remarkable over the years and this is his best work. There are minor parts from great performers like Shamaine Buencamino who plays Alma, Celine's mother and Adrienne Vergara as her sister, Joanne along with a memorable supporting turn by Zac Sibug as Ivan’s son, Elio. Then there’s Domingo's scene-stealing performance as she gets to top off the film’s most delicious running joke. UnMarry is a drama of separation and when it’s over you may feel like you know the lives it’s about as well as you know your own. Yet, it isn’t just the tale of a marital breakdown and its aftermath. It’s a film about annulment: how it operates, what it means, its larger consequences. But if you’re wondering when it was that a movie last dealt with the subject of separation on such a big-picture scale, you might have to go back 43 years — to the era of Ishmael Bernal's Broken Marriage. UnMarry makes a worthy addition to that canon, though so much has changed. This is the first film set inside what might be called the annulment industrial complex. It’s about two couples coming to terms with a process that, however necessary, is more wounding at times than their heartbreak. There are two sides to every separation and in UnMarry, Jeturian divides our sympathies in a most ingenious way. More than half of the drama is told from Celine's point of view, so it seems as if the annulment is all happening to her. And since Panganiban is an intensely sympathetic actor, we can feel, as Celine gets buried under circumstances beyond her control, that we’re on her side. But Jeturian peels back the truth of her marriage, layer by layer. And we start to see that Celine, for all her affection and intelligence, doesn’t know what she doesn’t know. The scene in which she relates the story of their marriage in court is a blistering tour de force. It’s also about how the system of annulment, as it now operates, can be one big messed-up shit show. Yet one of the powerful subtleties of UnMarry is that the annulment process, flawed as it is, becomes the vehicle through which Celine and Ivan confront the underlying reality of their marriages. They go to court and tear up their lives, all to solve a problem that Ivan, if he was a different sort of man, could have solved in two minutes. Chris Martinez and Therese Cayaba's brilliant screenplay never falters or hits a wrong note. They come up with smart, witty, saddened and searching characters whose ability to articulate their feelings is never less than lifelike and writes scenes that are like verbal arias. Marriage, though it can feel to those who cherish it, is like the difference between being alive and being nowhere. UnMarry captures that truth with such an exquisite combination of love and heartbreak that it leaves you chastened and enraptured.

Sound: Lamberto Casas Jr., Alex Tomboc

Music: Len Calvo

Editor: Benjo Ferrer

Production Design: Angel B. Diesta, PDGP

Director of Photography: Kara Moreno,LPS

Written By: Chris Martinez, Therese Cayaba

Directed By: Jeffrey Jeturian

     Beautifully written and performed, Mga Uod at Rosas (IAN Film Productions, 1982) goes far beyond stereotyping, never patronizing. The film has a static look with many shots of characters talking or sitting and waiting. Ingmar Bergman, one of the greatest filmmakers, used to say he believed the real subject of cinema is the human face. Ding, the starving artist is played by Johnny Delgado whose eyes can bore through other actors. Nina, the woman who inspires him, is played by Lorna Tolentino, startlingly beautiful, with sensuous lips and deep eyes under arched brows, she seems at first a prop for a familiar story: The artist is obsessed with her, but he wants more than that. Socorro (Nora Aunor), fully understands this, she knows him too well. The great central passages involve creation. Ding begins to sketch, we observe over his shoulder. Director Romy V. Suzara rarely cuts away, we see a blank sheet of paper and the drawing taking shape there. We see the physical process, then the first tentative lines on the page. Does it sound boring to watch a man simply drawing for extended periods? Yes, it does, but it is not. Suspense is building. That’s what Ding wants. Socorro begins to understand. She accepts the pain to prove she is the equal of his determination. One day when he despairs, she will see this through. Of the performances, there is nothing to be said about Delgado except that he communicates exactly what Ding needs from his art and doesn’t need many words to do it. Tolentino has an ethereal beauty, but it is her talent that has made her a leading actress of her generation. Suzara invites us to marvel at her beauty, but only in frank and desexualized terms. He wants everything, the blood, the fire, the ice, everything that rests within her body. Without any dialog or behavior to spell it out, Aunor has an astonishing face that can hold a close-up. The tiny inflections in her face open an overwhelming blend of frustration, patience, determination, her own kind of unpretentious clarity and above all deep sadness. 

     Tremendously played by Aunor, Socorro is a woman who generally likes to keep her emotions in check. Suzara makes her face the center of the movie. Many films refer to a lead character’s face – the reaction shot is not a new technique, but here, it’s about as well as it can be done. The real highlight of the film, though, is Aunor. Socorro’s complexity is phenomenally conveyed by Aunor, who is able to portray her character’s internal struggle with a few simple facial gestures. Socorro feels lived in and it’s the kind of performance that evokes a sense of familiarity and empathy with the viewer. Aunor commands the proceedings and Suzara lets you know it with lingering close-ups of her face, underscoring her beauty and boundless ability to make us care deeply no matter what role she undertakes. Aunor is always good, but performances like this suggest that for all her acclaim, she might actually be underrated. The movie works because of the beautiful brush strokes of Danny Dalena although Delgado clearly does a bit of painting and drawing himself. Suzara holds his camera still for long minutes at a time as we watch the blank page being turned into something beautiful. Many long moments go by without a word, it's that mesmerizing. Suzara's presentation is all matter of fact and in its matter of factness, Mga Uod at Rosas feels downright chaste. Suzara isn't a mechanical filmmaker, but there's a casual dexterity to the movie's craftsmanship; its aesthetics strike with a simplicity that belies its complexities as a work of art. Long takes, slow zooms and deep focus give Mga Uod at Rosas a sense of disciplined stillness, all the better to record the meticulous efforts of its two chief subjects as they make art out of life. There's more to Mga Uod at Rosas of course, but we take intermittent breaks to spend a moment here and there with Ding and Socorro. At the same time, the film does take its own twists and turns. If you suspect that his characters' faith will be tested and and hearts broken, you suspect correctly, just not necessarily in the ways you might imagine. Suzara has created his own work of art in directing Mga Uod at Rosas. Art and life are viewed as one and the same problem.

Production Design: Manny Morfe, Danny Dalena

Story & Screenplay: Edgardo M. Reyes

Director of Photography: Romeo Vitug

Film Editor: Ike Jarlego, Jr.

Musical Director: George Canseco

Directed By: Romy V. Suzara

     Joselito Altarejos' Greatest Performance (2076 Kolektib, Pelikula Indiopendent, Studio X, 2026) sets the stage for a movie wholly consumed by Sunshine Cruz's single, hypnotizing presence. Her Yvonne Rivera invites a tantalizing mixture of fascination and pity. Less nonfiction portrait than a poetic framing of domestic frustrations, Greatest Performance is a lot more than flailing show business aspirations. On the surface, Yvonne’s hardships aren’t unique. In Greatest Performance, Altarejos positions his star in the grips of inner turmoil while constantly battling to display self-confidence. As Yvonne revisits the possibility of returning to show business, the validity of her earlier efforts gradually come into play.  Though her complaints occasionally reach a pathetic extreme, the story’s dramatic weight holds: She’s the embodiment of genuine talent squandered by personal hangups and debilitating gender barriers, Yvonne is trapped somewhere in between the two. Altarejos fashions a narrative out of Yvonne's disarray by capturing her in small asides in between the greater developments in her emerging crisis. She reflects on her mistakes and rehearses. Even so, by virtue of Yvonne’s uneasy state of affairs, the movie delivers a canny look at the ills of the entertainment industry. Ms. Cruz expresses emotion no less candidly than she would in any context: Even her rawest confessions are delivered with an actorly awareness of dramatic consequence, there’s little doubting her ferocity as an actress. A performer is different, to be sure someone uniquely conscious of the various roles they must inhabit and trained to do so but in degree, not in kind.

     Actor Soliman Cruz looks to be having a field day behaving badly as filmmaker Mar Alvarez, the personification of the cruelty women experience in the industry, while Oliver Aquino is totally committed to Drew's trajectory. In more precocious hands, Altarejos' densely self-reflexive premise could come across as coldly eggheaded, but his formal conviction and profound empathy for his subject ensure the film never feels ruled by its concept. The helmer also acts as his own editor and writer, and his crisp, refined work in both those departments contributes to the films' simultaneous sense of intimacy and intent examination, but his camera’s investment in Ms. Cruz is unwavering — and she returns it with equally committed dependence. Greatest Performance convincingly reconciles private passion with public desire by suggesting that, for women in particular, the 21st-century limelight is always on, no matter the setting or venue. Altarejos' extraordinary collaboration with Ms. Cruz is a playful, provocative examination of self-performance. As much as Greatest Performance is a rare and singular portrait of a woman struggling to stage a comeback, it succeeds best as a layered commentary on the many facets of performance. Perhaps the most refreshing aspect of Greatest Performance, in the end, is how much of a true collaboration it is between filmmaker and subject. Ms. Cruz stands as Altarejos' creative equal: an emotionally charged, complicated and melancholic spirit who lives through intersecting roles in order to find her own peace of mind. Exhilarating and unnerving in equal measure, Greatest Performance is the rare film that could be said to capture life in its purest, most lyrical form.

Director/Writer: Joselito Altarejos

Directors of Photography: Manuel Garcellano, Marco Bertillo Mata

Editor: Joselito Altarejos

Sound Desigbn: Alex Tomboc, Bebet Casas

Musical Score: Arbi Barbarona

Production Design: 2076 Kolektib