Joel Ferrer
2021Hello, World
Joel Ferrer
Reuben Uy, Victor Medina
Long-time friends, Jeff and Johan have just graduated from high school. The former refuses to join his mom to move to the U.S. while the latter resists going to college. Filmmaker Joel Ferrer nostalgically captures the trials and joys of teenage love in an offbeat dramedy for his debut feature.
Hello, World
Woke Up Like This
Joel Ferrer
Vhong Navarro, Lovi Poe
A story about Nando who's a dutiful son and breadwinner to his family and Sabrina a rich kid and one of the top models in the country. While both prepare for their biggest breaks, these two strangers wake up one day in an extraordinary circumstance switching bodies with each other.
Woke Up Like This
어떤 방문
Naomi Kawase, Hong Sang-soo
Dante Perez, Kristine Kintana
Hong Sang-Soo’s Lost in the Mountains (South Korea, 32min) the visitor is the supremely self-centred Mi-Sook, who drives to Jeonju on impulse to see her classmate Jin-Young – only to discover that her friend is having an affair with their married professor, who Mi-Sook once dated herself. The level of social embarrassment goes off the scale. In Naomi Kawase’s Koma (Japan, 34min), Kang Jun-Il travels to a village in rural Japan to honour his grandfather’s dying wish by returning a Buddhist scroll to its ancestral home. Amid ancient superstitions, a new relationship forms. And in Lav Diaz’ Butterflies Have No Memories (Philippines, 42min) ‘homecoming queen’ Carol returns to the economically depressed former mining town she came from – and becomes the target of an absurd kidnapping plot hatched by resentful locals. Serving as his own writer, cameraman and editor, Diaz casts the film entirely from members of his crew and delivers a well-seasoned mix of social realism and fantasy. —bfi
Visitors
Elehiya sa Dumalaw Mula sa Himagsikan
Lav Diaz
Evelyn Vargas, Sigrid Andrea Bernardo
Deliberately structured and less beholden to its narrative, the film is told in three parts, with each part pertaining to each of the three visits of the time-travelling visitor from when the country was fighting for independence from Spain.
Elegy to the Visitor from the Revolution
The Write Moment
Dominic Lim
Jerald Napoles, Valeen Montenegro
A heartbroken writer tries to get back with an ex through his romantic comedy hugot script but fails and instead finds himself magically living-out the scenes he has written. He’s forced to follow everything verbatim or else face being stuck in an existential loop of scenes that repeat over and over again.
The Write Moment