The Filipino Shorts Program of Bakunawa Fest XI exclusively curated for the Sentro Rizal Film Club (June–September 2025) brings together six compelling works by young and promising filmmakers that showcase the inventiveness of fantastic films in Philippine cinema. Each film offers a unique lens into the personal, the political, and the fantastical, while affirming the power of short filmmaking to tell layered stories.

 

In Ronald Cartagena’s ‘Old World’, a poacher’s search for pitcher plants in the forest leads to an uncanny encounter with grief, seemingly connecting lines between the natural world and human vulnerability.
 

From ecological mystery, the program shifts to the political in Ace Balbarez’s time-shifting ‘Indigo’, where a stuttering student discovers a time-traveling cubicle and, through it, witnesses decades of student activism, linking past struggles to present realities.
 

The theme of longing takes a quieter form in Linus Masandag’s ‘samtang naghulat ko nga maakoa ka...’ (as i await you to be mine...), a lo-fi photo-driven love story about unspoken desire and the ache of watching from a distance.

Turning inward, Redsh Alba’s ‘Ligawang Malay’ portrays a middle-aged couple whose monotonous routine is disrupted when sleepwalking raises existential questions about identity and togetherness.
 

Edgar Allan Reyes’ ‘Caraingin’ brings a chilling edge to the lineup: what begins as a journalist’s simple assignment to cover local cuisine transforms into a tense journey into superstition, secrets, and survival.
 

Finally, Vincent Ibut’s ‘The Night is Alive’ takes us into a playful yet unsettling zombie outbreak in Manila, where two friends treat chaos as an adventure until mortality comes too close. Personally close.
 

Together, these shorts trace arcs of love, fear, memory, and resistance, reminding us that Filipino filmmakers continue to push the boundaries of storytelling while remaining rooted in urgent cultural and social contexts.