Karenina Haniel

The Philippines, 1972. Mysterious things are happening in a remote barrio. Wails are heard from the forest, cows are hacked to death, a man is found bleeding to death at the crossroad and houses are burned. Ferdinand E. Marcos announces Proclamation No. 1081 putting the entire country under Martial Law.

The children living in a Philippines ghetto grow up too fast, dealing with the cruel world where they have to be responsible for their own lives. But they have bright, innocent and good dreams in their hearts. The reality on the streets of capitalism is, however, too harsh to hold on to these dreams.

A rich young man hires his classmate to pretend to be his girlfriend to appease his father. Though it is meant to be purely a business arrangement, real sparks fly as they spend time together.

Andres Bonifacio y de Castro is considered to be one of the most influential proponents in the struggle against Spanish colonial rule in the Philippines during the late nineteenth century. Bonifacio’s widow is searching for her husband’s missing dead body; as she and her followers stumble deeper into the jungle, they become entangled in the dense thicket of their own guilt and responsibility. The Spanish governor tries to play off the various rebel factions and their utopian visions against each other. At the same time, a badly wounded companion of Bonifacio reflects upon the victims a revolution inevitably creates. Mythology, facts and a vibrant sense of history merge.

Klay, a Gen Z nursing student who wakes up and finds herself in the world of Jose Rizal’s novels Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo.

Kara Mia