Canadian Premiere
Forced to return to the Philippines as the world abruptly closes, Maya recedes into a terrorizing solitude and a fever dream of mixed animation ensues.
Alyana Cabral
Philippines
2021
In Sambal with English subtitles
Featured in:
MODES 1
Visions of dark impulses are given the spotlight and invite an opportunity to reflect on the personal in relation to the political. From Congo to China, and the Philippines to Poland, the end is nigh.
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
Afternoons of Solitude
Pacification director Albert Serra turns his unflinching gaze on the subject of bullfighting, and in particular the famous young matador Andrés Roca Rey. The film challenges us to look its subject square in the eye and draw our own conclusions.
The Mother and the Bear
Johnny Ma’s film stars Kim Ho-jung as a Korean woman who flies to Winnipeg when her immigrant daughter is hospitalized there. This crowd-pleaser plays up cultural differences to hilarious effect and offers a touching take on mother-daughter tension.
The Executioner
Regularly cited as the greatest Spanish film ever made, Berlanga's masterpiece is a pitch black comedy about an undertaker lined up by the state executioner to marry his beautiful daughter -- but he'll also have to inherit the old man's job.
8
The always stylish, idiosyncratic Basque auteur Julio Medem is back with one of his most ambitious films (and our closing night gala), a sweeping historical romance in eight chapters, spanning eight decades in Spanish history from the 1930s to the present day.
The Plague
At a water polo camp, Ben is plunged into the deep end of toxic peer pressure. Terrified of incurring his campmates’ wrath, he joins them in tormenting a kid whose skin rash has been branded “the plague”. But then he experiences a breakout of his own...
Credits
Producer
Gale Osorio
Screenwriter
Maria Estela Paiso
Cinematography
Eric Bico
ANIM
Vladimer Castañeto
Editor
Maria Estela Paiso
Production Design
Kevin Paguntalan
Director
Maria Estela Paiso
Maria Estela Paiso was born in Quezon City, Philippines and studied Communication Arts in college. After several music videos and years of visual experiments, she forays into directing with her first short film, It’s Raining Frogs Outside.