HAPPY BIRTHDAY

In the patriarchal system every sex act is actually a kind of rape?

After the death of the family patriarch, a mother and daughter’s precarious existence is ripped apart. They must find strength in each other if they are to survive the malevolent forces that threaten to engulf them.

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.

At Lara's 13th birthday, her mother takes her to a picnic in the park. Everything goes well until the girl disappears, leaving the mother in complete despair.

20 volunteers agree to take part in a seemingly well-paid experiment advertised by the university. It is supposed to be about aggressive behavior in an artificial prison situation. A journalist senses a story behind the ad and smuggles himself in among the test subjects. They are randomly divided into prisoners and guards. What seems like a game at the beginning soon turns into bloody seriousness.

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.

Thobile persevered without giving up, she persisted in her relationship, and her daughter wholeheartedly embraced her viewpoint throughout.

Kresten, newly wed, is on the threshold of a great career success in his father-in-law´s company. But when the death of his own father takes him back to his poverty-stricken childhood home, far out in the country, his career plans fall apart. For one thing he has to deal with his loveable, backward brother, who is now all alone; for another, he meets a stunning woman who comes to the farm as a housekeeper, in disguise of her real profession as a call-girl.

A mysterious and powerful being in the river catches the attention of the people living around it.