Animation has this rare gift to be anything. It can bend time, break physics, burst into colorful new shapes, step into a memory, or make a metaphor tangible. In this program, we see artists using wildly different animated styles, from fluid, painterly abstraction to raw, almost tactile grit, all created to tell stories that are deeply human. Some feel like dreams, some like memories, others like reality. This set, programmed exclusively for our sister festival, Hundred Islands Film Festival in Alaminos City, remind us that animation is beyond fantasy and feelings. It is limitless in the hands of an imaginative maker.
 

‘The Story of My Meat Life’ is like going through someone’s sketchbook while the owner talks to you. This piece uses simple, intimate drawings to walk us through one woman’s lifelong discomfort with eating meat. No lectures of sorts, just small, vivid memories that shaped an individual’s habits. Minimal, direct, and charmingly personal. 

‘Sewing Love’, on the other hand, is animation as poetry. The film meditates on love’s impermanence. How it transforms us, then moves on, like water that touches us only briefly but leaves a trace. Here, death and rebirth become natural movements in the current of connection, suggesting that love’s residue is felt as much in absence as in presence.

When animation dives headfirst into the subconscious, the result would be ‘In Half’. A man, trapped by fear, is pulled into a strange, magical world where he’s forced to face the ghosts of his past. The visual style changes with his state of mind, sometimes dreamlike, sometimes unsettling, mirroring the way our inner worlds shift between comfort and confrontation.
 

Imagine a post-apocalyptic graphic novel brought to life complete with mutants, wastelands, and a border guarded with lethal force. The result would be ‘The Fence’. Beneath the high-stakes action is a political undercurrent about migration, belongingness, and the cycles of control. The textures here feel almost radioactive themselves, giving the story a roughness that fits the desperation of its characters.

Steeped in folklore, ‘Tigre’ takes us into a jungle where every shadow could be alive and every rustle carries a warning. The style is rich and layered, drawing from both traditional illustration and contemporary Latin American graphic art. It feels like stepping into a story passed down over generations where beauty and danger are intertwined.
 

Across these films, the diversity of style isn’t just aesthetic—it’s essential. Sewing Love flows like a river of emotions; Meat Life sketches the shape of memory; In Half visualizes the labyrinth of the mind; The Fence throws us into the grit of survival; Tigre immerses us in the lush and perilous unknown. Together, they show us that animation is less about making drawings move, and more about making ideas breathe.