Esoterica: Manila

The Battle of Tirad Pass was fought between Filipino revolutionary forces and Americans of the 33rd Infantry Regiment in Ilocos Sur. Brigadier General Gregorio del Pilar led the Filipinos, while Major Peyton March led the Americans. The battle resulted in the death of Del Pilar, along with 51 Filipino soldiers.

Ely, a young man who can't get over Celine, his past love, meets Mia, a young woman who escaped from a painful past in the Philippines and is trying her luck to rebuild her life in Spain. They meet. They fall in love. But can they overcome the hurt of the past to have a future together?

This is the story of Visayans coming to the MetroManila area in search of greener pastures. Dodong Valderama, a jack-of-trades orphan, and Santo Nino devotee, sis among them, trying his luck in a different place. He meets Inday and her Lola Angeling, also Visayan immigrants, who are fish vendors. Angeling dreams for her daughter to become a popular singer , and hopefully one day, this will get them out of the slums. Angeling is pursued by town widower Max. Dodong, whose idol is the late Flash Elorde, eventually finds a full time job as janitor in a boxing gym. Inday fails to win the town singing contest, much to the disappointment of Lola Angeling.With the help of friend Lao, Dodong pursues Inday until they become sweethearts, then husband and wife.

A tale of an innocent woman who unravels horrible truths while in search of her long lost sister in the city.

As the second work of young director Ran Yinxiao, "May the Rivers and Seas Flow Upward" is set in Chongqing and tells a different kind of family story between three people who are not related by blood. The film has a time span of nearly a century and records the life trajectories of two generations and two families.

An introverted teenage boy lies to his parents that he'd sleep over at his friends'. However, he made an appointment with a random guy found on a dating app. The street is filled with dead hustlers, but nobody seems to notice these strange occurrences.

Kiryuuin Shou is in 3rd year in High School, his friend Jun is heartbroken by his cheating ex-boyfriend Kenji. Kiryuuin and Jun go to the beach to have fun and to meet some new guys. Kiryuuin nearly dies... But he is saved by a sexy lifeguard: Kyan.

A story of three sisters in a family home by the beach in the province.

An aging assassin hides in a facility for abandoned senior citizens to protect a daughter he left years ago.

In a dark, velvety theatre, there is a first kiss between Pietro and Tommaso. When the lights come back on, however, the two students have different expectations of what might follow. The chaos of awakening desire in its complexity and sensuality is told and made almost physically tangible through looks and gestures, approach and retreat, hope and fear.

Amidst the vast sugar plantations of Negros in Southern Philippines, a matriarch lies in the throes of death. Her children rush home to confront the crisis as news of the impending death of their well-loved mother spreads among the community. There, in their ancestral house, the siblings are forced to deal with the issues of inheritance, tradition and the family legacy. It is a familiar tale. After all, every family has its story. And to each one, its own deserved secrets.

Decades before the rise of liberalism in Spanish-era colonial Philippines, a young charismatic preacher leads a movement for equality and religious freedom for his fellow native Filipinos. He is hailed as the Christ of the Tagalogs, but is sentenced to death for heresy by both Church and State.

Rekados is a magic-realist tragicomedy of three generations of cooks in the slums that own a karinderia. Josefina, the matriarch whose traditional skill in cooking keeps the family alive; Laura, the daughter who prefers cooking to please her customers and the man she desires; and caught in between the two is Pinay, the granddaughter who mimics Kris Aquino to get a basketball player of her own. In their small world of the kitchen that empowers and imprisons them, they cook dishes that symbolize their affection: adobo; kare-kare; dinuguan; and pansit. Each of them brings different flavors as they mix with each other and the men of their desires.

Pandanggo has three stories with parallel themes converging in one event, the Kasilonawan Festival in Obando: a career woman learning to dance tango who is torn between her dance partner and live-in partner has to choose the man who will satisfy her dream of raising a family; a wife whose wish to conceive a baby boy to make her husband happy brings her feet to the festival, but fate has other plans of bringing the child into her life; and a modern woman who, amidst her medical condition that might render her childless for the rest of her life, finds connection with an ancient lore about fertility.

Trisha, a Filipino transgender woman, suddenly dies while being crowned in a beauty pageant. Her last wish was to be presented as a different celebrity on each night of her wake, but her conservative father wants to bury her as a man.

When her son gets critically injured in a car accident, a mother discovers that there's more to his relationship with his friend than she had thought.

A young woman tired of being the rebound girl makes rules for herself to avoid that situation. But she is immediately challenged when she makes a connection with another heartbroken young man.

In a failed diamond heist, two hopeless thieves hide out in an apartment taking a ten-year-old boy hostage. With a gang of dirty police closing in on them each thief must decide to what lengths he will go to survive--a decision that will change the boy's life forever.

Ten years ago, Ginny, an Architecture student, and Marco, a History professor, began a one-of-a-kind and unpredictable love story. In the five years that they were together, they brought out the best in each other, which included Marco’s unrealized dream of becoming a chef. Together, they worked towards their dream of opening up a restaurant, but when Ginny realized her own pursuits were different from his, she rejected his wedding proposal and left the country for a Masters degree in Architecture. At present, Ginny co-owns a one-stop Architecture and Interior Design firm specializing in Restoration. She receives an email from Marco, which was written and sent after their break-up, meant to be read four years later. It makes her feel even more regretful of leaving the love of her life.

Dong-su, who is tired of living in the city, takes vacation and breaks his leg while riding long distances. Dong-su finds a farmhouse, wandering around a strange country road, and stays there for a few days with the help of In-pyo. Dong-su and In-pyo are attracted to each other but they are not sure about their feelings...