Jea Lyka Cinco

In an effort to cope with the loss of his wife and son, a man decides to follow through with his family's plan to climb the Philippines' highest peak, Mount Apo. Soon, he finds himself in a journey of redemption, closure, and healing.

The film captures the ritual motions of the women in a family preparing for the wedding of seventeen-year-old Ayesah who is betrothed to a man she barely knows. As preparations for her union is underway, Ayesah is reunited with her childhood tutor Maguid who returns to the village as a militiaman after five years, reawakening Ayesah’s past memory of childhood infatuation. Throughout Ayesah’s confinement her precocious and rebellious eight-year-old sister Saripa becomes her eyes to the world beyond her room. Her mother Amina keeps her composure despite the fact her husband sleeps with his second wife half of the time, finding solace in the belief that it is both her religious and familial duty to be an obedient wife. Ayesah’s aunt Farida is tasked to ensure that she is prepared for the wedding. However, Farida’s dark past challenges Ayesah’s resolve finding herself choosing between love and loyalty to tradition and family.

A family is in ruins after the last male member dies. To salvage their future, the matriarch Kadiguia decides to look for a suitable husband for the eligible Tonina to continue the line of martyrs and warriors. Many miles away in the city, Aida secretly works in a hotel after falling victim to an illegal recruiter. She hides this fact from her family who believes that she is in faraway Kuwait working as a nanny.

Orphaned by war, 12-year old Nikol found a new home in Isla Kalilintad, an island community of people from different cultures and faith traditions. He was forced to become an adult at a tender age, trying to eke out a living to feed Langit, his younger brother. By serendipitous circumstance, Dr Sittie and Sr Claire, a team of humanitarian workers on a mobile medical mission, visited the isla before they proceed to the other smaller islands. Nikol, eager to grab the chance to work, presented himself as a natural healer and got accepted as an all around utility person for the mission. The mobile medical mission which runs on a low budget, relies on fishing boats offered by the communities they serve as they make their way to far-flung villages rarely reached by medical services from both government and private sector. Each journey to these unknown frontiers bears stories of struggle and survival of people affected by war and extreme poverty.