Miguel Louis Galang

 After a two-year break, the Ngilngig Asian Fantastic Film Festival is back with a trove of fantastical stories from all over the regions and Asia.

Director Jaime Pacena II and actress Gabby Padilla talk about their Cinemalaya 2024 film, ‘Kono Basho’, and the many ways a geographical place bears witness to the hardest of human experiences.

“Be liberated from convention,” goes Sinepiyu in their program invitation (arbitrarily translated by me). It’s not just a challenge posed to the filmmakers participating in the film festival, but it’s also a dare for future audiences: to suspend everything they think they know about student cinema and permit themselves to experience the new, the perverse, and the ambitious.

In 'As If It's True', a social media influencer and a musician enter a fake relationship to resuscitate their dying careers. Read our interview with director John Rogers as he talks about the process of making his film and more.