Ryan Capili

Miko Revereza's Nowhere Near shows how colonialism erases entire people and structures, even lineages and histories. There's something so potent and human in this memoir about the fear of statelessness and colonial trauma. It is something so spiritual and metaphysical.

Even though Love is a Gun is by far from redefining the neo-noir genre, there is still something enthralling about a forlorn man desperately in pursuit of rewriting his fate.

For a film about faith and questioning, I think it’s quite ingenious to use the medium of slow cinema to convey its themes because, in a way, there are a lot of commonality with each other in the sense that you have to be ready to embrace both, and you are willing to listen. And one can’t really force either, you have to devote yourself to it.

When This Is All Over may occasionally be confused at times, but it shows how you can turn an intimate story of a son who just wants to reunite with his mother into a one big trip.

Marupok AF (Where Is The Lie) comes from a sincere place of wanting to raise awareness on the struggles and difficulties that Trans people go through in our modern society, but the film doesn’t really do it justice by having Quark Henares tell the story and going with a dark comedic treatment.

Suzume is a sincere and poignant exploration of humanity's collective grief amid a tragedy. Despite some shortcomings on its story, there’s just something incredibly moving about a young teenage girl making an effort to stop a major tragedy and the deaths of others when she has already suffered the worst tragedy of her life. For once, a Makoto Shinkai film that feels cathartic and soulful.

Amirpour's unwavering commitment to her vision of a stylistic neon pulp movie makes up for the lack of narrative, making the watching experience quite a vibe.

Davy Chou’s Return to Seoul is an engrossing character study on identity and what it means to belong, cycling through the inner serenity and restless intensity of oneself, full of multitudes, incredibly evocative, and admirably purposeful. While it may be meandering and confused at times, it is a journey worth taking.