Movies: Hazel Orencio

A man is wrongly jailed for murder while the real killer roams free. The murderer is an intellectual frustrated with his country’s never-ending cycle of betrayal and apathy. The convict is a simple man who finds life in prison more tolerable, when so...

Made for the Venice Film Festival's 70th anniversary, seventy filmmakers made a short film between 60 and 90 seconds long on their interpretation of the future of cinema....

The Philippines, 1972. Mysterious things are happening in a remote barrio. Wails are heard from the forest, cows are hacked to death, a man is found bleeding to death at the crossroad and houses are burned. Ferdinand E. Marcos announces Proclamation ...

With the imminent death of his autocratic grandfather, coinciding with the burgeoning oppressive regime of Ferdinand Marcos, Servando Monzon III, inheritor of the hacienda and businesses of his powerful clan, agonizes on becoming the new feudal lord ...

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...

An artist struggles to finish his work. A storyline about a cult plays in his head. Fundamentalism will destroy the world. The artist destroys his muse in the process. He redeems her in the end....

Faced with Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s bloody murders and brazen lies, ethically conflicted police lieutenant Hermes Papauran continues his struggle to find a resolution to a 15-year-old case around a volcanic ash-laden landscape and an im...

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....

To this day, Ishmael Bernal's movie Himala is still in our town, in our world. This will be reflected in the broader perspective of the majority, of the surrounding events. Beliefs still lie in the truth. Consciousness is still dominant at the level ...

The Philippines is visited by an average of 20~28 strong typhoons and storms every year. It is the most storm-battered country in the world. Last year, Typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan), considered the strongest storm in history, struck the Philipines, leavin...

Continuing the tradition of national artist Ishmael Bernal's benchmark film Working Girls after 25 years, Working Girls of 2010 depicts the role of women in the new millennium. Seven women of different backgrounds, stories and personalities entwined ...

It is the year 2034 AD and Southeast Asia has been in the dark for the last three years, literally, because the sun hasn’t shone as a result of massive volcanic eruptions at the Celebes Sea in 2031. Madmen control countries, communities, enclaves and...

Three illegal miners journey back to their island after months of toiling in hellish conditions. With their hard-earned money, they traversed the sea, the mountains and the forest until they reached their destination. Or did they really reach their c...

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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...

After discovering a hidden clause in his work insurance, CELSO, a factory worker, goes extreme and faces a life-altering decision, challenging reality to secure his family's future....

Erwin Romulo, the late Alexis Tioseco’s best friend, recalls the events after the critic and his girlfriend Nika Bohinc’s untimely death in their home in Quezon City. Diaz makes use of one long take to allow Romulo an uninterrupted narration of the e...

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 ded...

Hilarion Zabala has a mysterious, recurring olfactory problem. A counselor/psychiatrist suspects a lingering case of phantosmia, a phantom smell, and possibly caused by a deep psychological fracture. One recommended radical cure is that Hilarion must...

Florentina Hubaldo keeps repeating her story, orally, akin to a mantra, a meditation and a prayer; her way of remembering; her means of maintaining hope for survival and redemption; fighting with what’s left of her memory. She lives and exist in a pl...