Allen Alzola

A puppeteer returns home hoping to settle down but gets his heart broken. Communicating only using his puppet, he decides to go on a journey with a nun, a sex worker and a teenage boy to a remote island where gold has been discovered.

Philippines, 1972. Des choses mystérieuses se produisent dans un quartier isolé. Des lamentations retentissent dans la forêt, des vaches sont tuées à coups de hache, un homme est retrouvé saigné à mort au carrefour et des maisons sont incendiées. Ferdinand E. Marcos annonce la proclamation n° 1081 mettant tout le pays sous la loi martiale.

A counselor/psychiatrist suspects a lingering case of phantosmia, a phantom smell, and possibly caused by a deep psychological fracture.

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 of illusion. The naive, savage, cruel, and selfish politics still prevail.

Tomas, the old venerable mayor of the remote town of Kawalan, learns that the invading Japanese will set up a garrison there. He organizes willing members in his community to set up a hidden settlement in the middle of the forest, where they can live unaffected by the horrors of war. As a young revolutionary during the 1896 fight against Spain and then as a soldier fighting against the Americans, Tomas had witnessed the effects of violence on people and become a pacifist. Now, he must see if inhabitants of the hidden settlement can escape the sufferings wrought by the war.

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 impenetrable lake.

A counselor/psychiatrist suspects a lingering case of phantosmia, a phantom smell, and possibly caused by a deep psychological fracture.

A counselor/psychiatrist suspects a lingering case of phantosmia, a phantom smell, and possibly caused by a deep psychological fracture.

In dreary Porac Pampanga, a young man, Daniel, abandons his motherland after winning the biggest cash prize in the history of Philippine lottery. Five years later, he is searching for home and redemption through the people that make up his past. With each visit, his story unfolds like the last digit of a winning combination.