2024 Roundup: Filipino Cinema Favorites

I was in a hurry okay 

I don’t like using the term “best” when I make these end of year lists. My completionist brain will always ask the question: are you sure? How could you say that if you haven’t seen everything? It is not a rational thought, because watching every single film that comes out is something that insane people do.

Given that the assessment of all art is subjective, I don’t necessarily see one person as an authority for determining what the “best” of anything is. Even if I’ve seen more movies than even the Urian (keep up, tanders) this year, I do not consider myself an authority on anything and neither is the writer for this or that. I do, however, see these lists as a way of seeing one’s opinion on all the movies they’ve seen over the past year, and probably find a couple of films to watch next. I enjoy reading end of year lists, even if I don’t agree with them. They’re fun.

That is why for almost the past decade or so I’ve used favorites as a term instead. I think X film is great, you may not and that’s fine (but I’m still right though. Just kidding.)

Before we move on to our top lists, here are a bunch of other Filipino films that I liked in 2024.

 

Favorite Short Films

Not gonna lie, some of the best Filipino films of this year are shorts. I haven’t been keeping up with all of them, but out of the fifty or so shorts I’ve seen this year, here are ten of my favorites. 

10. Text FIND DAD and Send to 2366 (dir. Kent Michael Cadungog) – a fun dig on the artificiality of reality shows and how people draw upon drama for the sake of views. It’s pretty loopy but very fun.

9. Nananahan (dir. Dwein Baltazar) – I think the thing that drew me most to Nananahan is its take on how a man’s life in labor is something pawned and temporary, claimed rarely and often ending in transition from one state of labor to another, also often ending unclaimed and in death.

8. Bahay, Baboy, Bagyo (dir. Miko Biong) – This gem from the Manila Film Festival portrays the sudden violence of urbanization in how it presents an idea of ‘home,’ then showing how it can be cruelly taken away.

7. Primetime Mother (dir. Sonny Calvento) – a little bit low on this list because it is meant to be a prototype for a larger feature. Tickled pink by its inspired casting, even more so at how it shows the lengths people will go through, even willingly participate in spectacle, for the sake of their families.

6. Lumang Tugtugin (dir. Pepe Diokno) – Pepe Diokno’s short film shows how violence (whether familial, societal, or institutional) spreads, a curse borne by one generation to the next.

5. Objects do not Fall Randomly from the Sky (a.k.a. Kay basta angkarabo yay bagay ibat ha langit, dir. Maria Estela Paiso) – perhaps one of the most creative and inventive of all the shorts here, Maria Estela Paiso’s film about the encroachment of our waters by the Chinese, and the previous and current administration’s unwillingness to stop them, is filled with the same anxiety, rage and unease as her previous film Ampangabagat nin talakba ha likol. It is also a reminder that what happens in our waters is not supernatural or divine, it happens due to the deliberate actions of people with bad intentions.

4. Yung Huling Swimming Before Life Happens (dir. Glenn Barit) – Glenn Barit’s followup to his 2019 film Cleaners is resonant in so many ways to me as an older adult. You do not need to see Cleaners to get this film, a bittersweet recollection of people and memories slowly fading.

3. Vox Humana (dir. Don Josephus Raphael Eblahan) – I saw this film at the Singapore International Film Festival, and it immediately made it into this list. Vox Humana uses sound and language to depict attitudes and prejudices towards indigenous peoples, then turning the tables on the audience afterwards. It’s quite the experience.

2. Projections of the City’s Daughter (dir. Julianne Rose Reyes) – this film hit me in a very personal way, as my own lived experiences are not so different from the director’s own. An absorbing, formally creative experimental documentary about films as the externalization of memory, films as the memetic medium in which they are stored, cinephilia as a love not only of the medium, but the memories contained within them.

1. Kinakausap ni Celso ang Diyos (dir. Glib Baldoza) – My favorite Filipino short of the year is a tragedy, in which a laborer gives his body, inadvertently mutilating himself for the sake of compensation, in order to provide for his family. It reaches the point where he gives his everything, literally moving the sky and stars, for the ones he loves.

Favorite Action or Action Adjacent Film

Banjo – Banjo is a crazy film made by crazy people who want to make a good action movie. It’s clear this was made with a lot of love, even though the end product is not very good. I still enjoyed it a lot, and at the very least it’s a movie where the action choreography stands out. The lore of Banjo is also so detailed, only The Kingdom is in its solar system.

Sagrada Luna – Sagrada Luna is the cult action film of the year. It’s certainly one of the wackiest as well, something that’s truly unhinged in a cinematic landscape that only occasionally colors outside the lines.

Favorite Romances

Chances Are, You and I – honestly surprised watching this one. It takes what is essentially a wattpadish story and does something interesting with it. This wouldn’t have worked half as well without Kira Balinger, watch out for that kid.

Pintor at Paraluman – a love story between a man and his creative spark made flesh, unable to consummate it, that unfulfilled desire fueling him even more. The very idea of it makes me very happy.

My Future You – One of the cutest films of the year, My Future You is a film about different kinds of love: the conventional kind between two like-minded souls, and loving what you have instead of holding to what ifs.

A Lab Story – Another extremely cute, feel-good film about puppy love yes, but also loving yourself and all that it entails.

Under a Piaya Moon – A love story between a man and his pastries he bakes. I half kid, it’s a love story between a man and his own culture and the traditions that culture is built on.

Favorite Pulpy Chick Lit Film

Guilty Pleasure – Guilty Pleasure is my guilty pleasure of 2024, a fun pulpy melodrama that takes itself seriously at just the right places.

Favorite Remake

Strange Frequencies: Taiwan Killer Hospital – We’ve made our share of remakes of Korean films this year (Sunny, My Sassy Girl), but Strange Frequencies takes the cake, as while it does follow the story beats of the original, it puts its own original spin on it. It’s also very fun to watch with friends.

Favorite Documentary (not in the top 15)

Bini Chapter 1 – Jet Leyco’s two Bini documentaries immediately put me over the edge from casual listener to fan, though the first is the better of the two. Whenever I pass by National Bookstore and see the Bini standee, I always try to guess who is who (I’m notoriously bad with faces.) Though it is Jet Leyco’s most formally safe work, Bini Chapter 1: Born to Win is surprisingly good, and like I said, it made me a fan.

Home of the Brave – the Filipino overseas worker faces all sorts of situations in their struggle to provide for their families back home. But who looks out for them? Home of the Brave shows the many ways immigrant and expat communities look after their own.

Non-Documentary Honorable Mentions

Isang Himala (dir. Pepe Diokno) – I am not a big fan of musicals, but Pepe Diokno’s adaptation of the 1982 masterpiece is very well made and carries the same resonance as the original.

Uhaw/Kabit (dir. Bobby Bonifacio Jr. and Lawrence Fajardo respectively) – Including my favorite Vivamax films in this list as honorable mentions. The previous section contains my thoughts about them.

Favorite Filipino Feature Films of 2024

 

15. Guardia de Honor (dir. Jay Altarejos) – if there is a theme in Filipino features this year, it is that while forgiveness is divine, there are some sins that must be held to account. Guardia de Honor has Altarejos using the family drama structure to show how the greater good is more important than blood, and that sometimes it takes blood in kind to wash these sins away.

 

14. The Hearing (dir. Lawrence Fajardo) – The Hearing shows how broken some of our societal systems are, and how we as a society disable our own in more ways than one. Considering that this was a last-minute replacement at Cinemalaya, the reults are pretty impressive.

 

13. An Errand (dir. Dominic Bekaert) – There are some films that don’t leave you after you leave the cinema, and for 2024, An Errand is my personal example. A film of imagined lives and prisons both self imposed and invisible, it’s quite unlike any other feature I’ve seen this year.

 

12. Love Child (dir. Jonathan Jurilla) – perhaps the purest love story of 2024 is a reworking of the form of the romcom/romance film, to show that the strongest kinds of love entail sacrifice, and lives beyond the happily ever afters of those kinds of films. It is also equally as tragic, as it shows how broken we are as a society to permit these sacrifices in the first place.

 

11. Phantosmia (dir. Lav Diaz) – When someone is co-opted into the service of injustice, his sins accumulate like creeping rot. It is not easily cleansed; its stench will cling for a long time. But in Phantosmia, it does not mean one cannot liberate himself from injustice through his own actions. Calmer but still indignant, Phantosmia is one of Lav Diaz’s most narratively cohesive features.

 

10. Salome (dir. Teng Mangansakan) – Languid, yes, but deeply entrancing, Salome comments on history, cultural identity, and the control colonial institutions have on them. It is also a treatise on how cultural workers consider art and art history, on how semiotics shapes our cultural understanding. It’s utterly fascinating.

 

9. Elevator (dir. Philip King) – My favorite romance-adjacent (i.e. not exactly a romance) film of the year uses the tropes of its genre in fun and interesting ways.

 

8. Moneyslapper (dir. Bor Ocampo) – draped in pitch black humor, Bor Ocampo’s Moneyslapper is a sucker punch of a film that shows that money can’t buy everything, and to use it as a tool to wield over others ultimately results in emptiness.

 

7. Outside (dir. Carlo Ledesma) – we are the real monsters, and Carlo Ledesma’s Outside, a film that I personally deem to be an important part of Philippine zombie canon, is a perfect portrait of our own propensity towards unimaginable monstrosity.

  

6. Kono Basho (dir. Jaime Pacena II) – Sometimes a film just comes at the right place and time, and for me it was Kono Basho. It came at a time where I was undergoing grief of my own, and because of that it resonated with me. Aside from that, however, Kono Basho also says how places, whether it be a home, a memorial to the dead, or just a ‘place’ beside someone you love, is entrenched in our memories and lives with us forever.

 

5. Ghosts of Kalantiaw (dir. Chuck Escasa) – Chuck Escasa’s documentary on historiography and how myths transform into dogma is fascinating, and resonant to the emergence of the post truth era of the present day.

 

4. Tumandok (dirs. Kat Sumagaysay and Richard Salvadicio) – Tumandok never really left me after Cinemalaya. It is a profound work of regional cinema, art created by the people it represents, in its rawest and most true form.

 

3. Uninvited (dir. Dan Villegas) – a benchmark of fun genre storytelling in 2020s Filipino cinema, Uninvited to me is a film that shows how fun it is to watch a Filipino film in the cinema sometimes.

 

2. Green Bones (dir. Zig Dulay) – brimming with empathy and sentimentality (in a good way, at least for me), the journey I undertook with Green Bones may have its destination visible from a mile away, but it is no less compelling or well done.

 

1. Alipato at Muog (dir. JL Burgos) - My favorite film of Cinemalaya ended up being my favorite Filipino feature of 2024. How do you search for an invisible man? How do you love him still? Alipato at Muog tells us it’s by keeping that flame inside all of us alive, by advocating for change in his name, and trying to hold to account those who are responsible. Resurface all desaparecidos.

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This list is part of my 2024 Filipino Cinema in Review Compilation book that I will be releasing shortly.