Filipino Canadian filmmaker Kent Donguines travels back to the Philippines to reconnect with his roots. In a nation with over 134,000 years of history and centuries of colonization — under Spanish, American, and Japanese rule — Donguines notes a shared feeling of weakened traditional identity among many Filipinos he knows and meets. A vital part of their heritage, the centuries-old practice of tattooing, was banned by colonizers and even shunned by Filipinos.
Donguines travels to Buscalan, a secluded mountain community, to discover more about the revival of Indigenous Kalinga tattoos. Guided by 107-year-old master artist Apo Whang-od, Donguines learns the deep history and symbolism behind the tattoos. The revival of this Indigenous body art tradition offers a powerful way to preserve culture, spark pride, and strengthen identity, and Treasure of the Rice Terraces shows how traditions can survive, evolve, and inspire both local communities and cultural identity worldwide.
Oct 5 & 6: Q&A
Presented by
Supported by
Media Partner
Maria “Apo-Whang-Od” Oggay, Kent Donguines, Grace Palicas, Lars Krutak, Kim Atienza, Michelle Marquez Dee
Canada/Philippines
2025
In English, Tagalog and Butbut with English subtitles
Nudity
Open to youth!
Book Tickets
Credits & Director
Executive Producer
Kent Donguines, Jacob Crawford, Lars Krutak
Producer
Jacob Crawford, Bailey Wood, Kent Donguines
Screenwriter
Kent Donguines
Cinematography
John Fleming
Editor
Elad Tzadok
Kent Donguines
Kent Donguines is a Filipino Canadian filmmaker based in Vancouver. He is the CEO of Aimer Films Inc. and produced the award-winning CBC short documentary This Ink Runs Deep, which premiered at the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival. He also wrote, directed, and produced the Telus Storyhive short film Kalinga (2020), a documentary about the sacrifices Filipina nannies make to work in Canada. That film had its world premiere at the DOXA Documentary Film Festival and won the Kathleen Shannon Award from the Yorkton Film Festival. Donguines recently completed his first feature documentary, Canadian Adobo.
Filmography: Kalinga (2020); Brown Enough (2021); Paco (2022)
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
NAZA
NAZA is a codeword euphemistically used by Israeli intelligence to indicate the number of civilians it expects will be killed in an airstrike. This chilling documentary exposes the policy and process of state-sanctioned mass killings.
The Sandbox
Borders are the faultlines of the world. Kenya-Jade Pinto's doc examines how modern surveillance technology, bio-metrics and AI are combining to make land and sea borders as impenetrable as air travel, and suggests the unspoken cost is our own humanity.
Atonement
A former Marine suffering from PTSD seeks a meeting with the Iraqi family to which he did great wrong ten years earlier in the Gulf War. Atonement navigates challenging, politically-charged psychological territory with diligence and sensitivity.
The Pervert's Guide to Ideology
Slavoj Zizek re-teams with director Sophie Fiennes for another wildly entertaining romp through the crossroads of cinema and philosophy. From The Sound of Music to Titanic, Jaws to The Dark Knight, Zizek offers new ways to understanding Hollywood.
The Pervert's Guide to Cinema
The Pervert's Guide to Cinema takes the viewer on an exhilarating ride through some of the greatest movies ever made (Hitchcock, Lynch, Tarkovsky et al). Serving as guide is Slavoj Zizek, the superstar Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalyst.
You Had to Be There
In a strange quirk of fate, the legendary Toronto '72 production of the musical comedy Jesus hit Godspell launched a constellation of comedy stars, all unknown at the time but now known to us as Martin Short, Eugene Levy, Dave Thomas, Victor Garber, et al