Canadian Premiere
Ten years after Super Typhoon Haiyan, many Filipinos are still crawling from the wreckage. But some can still muster the will to dance amidst the devastation. Jaya, a non-binary teacher and former television comedian, is one of those indomitable souls. In a final bid for fame, they set off across the Philippines to compete in a beauty pageant only to encounter Arnel, a former student, en route. Banding together, this unlikely duo learn to support one another in a world at the brink of collapse.
Drawing on a decade of collaboration with Jaya and Arnel, Seán Devlin (himself a Juno-nominated comedian) stocks his hybrid film with super typhoon survivors, ensuring that it not only honours their experiences, but is infused with their resilience. Dizzying and deeply felt, Asog nimbly dances between the comic, sorrowful, and political. Both inspired and impacted by climate chaos, it recognizes the unprecedented circumstances we live in and responds with a film quite unlike anything we’ve ever seen.
Asog is the film we need right now. It is full of such passion and urgency and humour and love that it gurgles out of the screen and into your soul. I’m honoured to be an executive producer as I want every single person I know and many, many I don’t to see this thing of scarred beauty and queer, savage joy.
Alan Cumming, Executive Producer
September 30 & October 1: Q&A with director Seán Devlin & crew
Jaya, Arnel Pablo, Ricky Gacho Jr.
Canada/Philippines
2023
Spectrum
In Tagalog and Waray with English subtitles
Coarse Language, Violence
Book Tickets
Indigenous & Community Access
Indigenous Access Tickets Community Access Tickets Ticket Donation Requests
Credits
Executive Producer
Adam McKay, Alan Cumming, Joel Kim Booster, Matthew Krysko, Cecilia R. Mejia
Producer
Amanda Ernst, Seán Devlin
Screenwriter
Seán Devlin, Jaya, Arnel Pablo
Cinematography
Anna MacDonald
Editor
Yap Sei-Been
Director
Seán Devlin 叶 世民
Seán’s debut feature When The Storm Fades earned him two jury prizes for Best Director and the Emerging Canadian Director prize at VIFF. His films have been presented at Cannes Docs, Tribeca, Cairo and Sao Paulo International Film
Festivals. He is an alum of the Rotterdam Producers Lab. His debut album Airports. Animals was nominated for the 2022 Juno award for Comedy Album of the Year. He was a Consulting Producer on Borat: Subsequent Moviefilm.
Filmography: When The Storm Fades (2018)
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
Train Dreams
A lovely, ruminative movie set in the Pacific Northwest in the first half of the last century. Robert (Joel Edgerton) is a lumberjack, a taciturn man who comes to appreciate the life slipping between his fingers.
Wisdom of Happiness
An audience with the Dalia Lama, who, at 90, looks back on his life and shares the tenets of Buddhism as a practical guide to surviving the 21st Century with joy and compassion.
Caravaggio
In the latest from Exhibition on Screen, co-directors David Bickerstaff and Phil Grabsky shed light not only on Caravaggio's paintings, but his life, often kept half-hidden in the same chiaroscuro tones he shaded his masterpieces with.
Left-Handed Girl
Co-written and edited by Sean Baker (Anora), Shi-Ching Tsou's heartwarming solo feature debut follows a single mom in Taipei who is too consumed with her noodle stand to keep tabs on her five-year-old daughter's burgeoning shoplifting habit.
Dawn Pemberton Sings Aretha + Amazing Grace Film Screening
These dates are going to knock your socks off: one of the all-time great concert films, Aretha Franklin performing at the New Bethel Baptist Church in 1972, and Canada's own Queen of Soul, Dawn Pemberton, performing live in Aretha's honour.
The Colour of Pomegranates + The House Is Black
This month's Pantheon screening is a double-bill, Sergei Parajanov's extraordinary evocation of the life and work of C18th Armenian poet Sayat Nova, and, The House is Black (22 min), the only film directed by the great Iranian poet Forugh Farrokhzad.