TV & Film
EVERY NOVEMBER, hums of a projector fill Quezon City as an annual event lights up the movie screens. Keeping this tradition alive, QCinema returns this November 14 to 23 for its 13th year, showcasing over 80 films spanning a range of continents and genres. From screenings at your nearest Quezon City cinemas to affordable tickets priced at Php 250, QCinema remains one of the most accessible gateways to international and independent film showings.
This year, the event embodies the theme of Film City. Whether it’s the Asian Next Wave lineup, the vibrant RainbowQC selections, the festival’s lineup draws together stories from around the world to reframe how we see the ones closest to home. Traversing from global spotlights to intimate local voices, the film festival reflects the breadth of contemporary cinema for cinephiles and casual watchers alike.
In case you missed it, Vantage Magazine has gathered our VantPicks, composed of nine standout titles, which left the strongest impressions on us this QCinema season.
International Picks
The President’s Cake (2025)
Stakes are high for young Iraqi girl Lamia Ahmed Nayef (Baneen Ahmad Nayyef), who has been assigned the daunting task of baking a cake for the country’s president. Set in the politically tumultuous time of 1990s Iraq, Director Hasan Hadi builds on previous filmmakers that have re-imagined war through the innocent eyes of a young girl. The strange predicament Lamia finds herself in becomes a compelling angle that draws viewers to interact with the film’s themes of authoritarianism and conformity. Resonating with a global audience, The President’s Cake has also garnered international acclaim, as evidenced by its awards at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival.
La Petite Dernière (“The Little Sister”) (2025)
Director Hafsia Herzi’s La Petite Dernière (“The Little Sister”) (2025) follows 17-year-old Fatima, the youngest of three sisters in a French-Algerian family, as she begins university in Paris. As she settles into this new environment, Fatima navigates emerging friendships, explores her individual sexual expressions, and wrestles with the intense push-pull of faith and heritage. Herzi’s deeply personal coming-of-age drama knits identity, queerness, and cultural belonging into an intimate portrait of a young woman who strives to stay true to herself amid conflicting loyalties.
Its emotional clarity and cultural nuance resonated widely, earning both the Queer Palm and Best Actress for Nadia Melliti at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival.
Local Picks
Agapito (2025)
The Philippine short film Agapito (2025) by directors Arvin Belarmino and Kyla Danelle Romero is set in a worn, retro duck-pin bowling alley where a group of pin-setters prepare for the arrival of a special guest. As the pin-setters rehearse and await their visitor, the film alludes to the resilience of working-class Filipinos, revealing layers of fragile dreams, mutual loyalties, and quiet frustrations. What begins as idle waiting becomes a cinematic portrait of filial devotion, labor, and the bonds that quietly sustain everyday lives.
This grounded storytelling supported the film’s strong festival run. After its Cannes premiere, Agapito earned an Honourable Mention for Best International Short Film at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival.
Open Endings (2025)
In Nigel Santos’ Open Endings (2025), four queer women—Mihan, Charlie, Hannah, and Kit—find themselves orbiting one another long after the romances between them have ended. What remains are friendships that are both tender and volatile, haunted by the echoes of what once was. The film unfolds with the unhurried rhythm of lived experiences, capturing the fragile beauty of connections that refuse to fade away. Santos also sidesteps melodrama for something even truer: a portrait of love that endures in shifting forms, where closure is neither possible nor necessary.
After winning Best Ensemble and becoming Cinemalaya’s most-watched film, Open Endings arrives at QCinema as a quiet triumph of queer storytelling—bittersweet, disarming, and deeply alive.
Honorable Mentions
Couture (2025)
In Alice Winocour’s Couture (2025), Angelina Jolie plays Maxine, an American filmmaker hired to direct a fashion film in Paris while confronting a life-altering medical diagnosis. What begins as an assignment in a “useless” industry soon unfolds into a quiet reckoning with art, aging, and the body’s fragility. Following her acclaimed Paris Memories (2022), Winocour balances the glamour and artifice of Paris Fashion Week with a cool, empathetic eye for the women who sustain it.
Couture premiered at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival, showcasing Jolie’s first French-speaking role. It also highlighted Winocour’s continued fascination with how women rebuild themselves amid the surfaces that define the fashion world—immaculate runways, polished editorials, and curated backstage chaos, which are all engineered to mask vulnerability, aging, and emotional pressure.
Diamonds in the Sand (2024)
After a series of major life events, including the death of his mother, Japanese salaryman Yoji (Lily Franky) decides to start over and move to the Philippines—a country supposedly filled with “happy people.” Diamonds in the Sand (2024) deals with Yoji’s decision to rebuild his life and reject a lonely, discontented existence. The protagonist’s journey is presented in vibrantly colored scenes that show the lively city of Manila, making Yoji’s experiences all the more meaningful for local viewers. As the film deals with community, social isolation, and death, audiences can expect to find human connection, love, and friendship all wrapped up in a beautifully shot movie.
Little Rebel’s Cinema Club (2025)
Set in 2008 in the quiet coastal city of Parepare, Indonesia, Little Rebel’s Cinema Club (2025) follows 14-year-old Doddy, who serves as the town’s most passionate storyteller. With no cinema in sight, he turns his friends’ imaginations into a movie theater as he retells Jakarta’s latest zombie flicks with breathless precision. When Doddy is about to leave for the capital, he dreams of filming one final scene, so he borrows his brother’s camcorder and embraces a dash of rebellion to create their own movie magic. Through this film, director Khozy Rizal gives viewers a tender, mischievous ode to youth, friendship, and the longing to make art in places where it feels impossibly distant.
Vox Humana (2024)
Don Josephus Raphael Eblahan’s Sci-Fi short film Vox Humana (2024) trails after a mysterious man found in the forest of a mountain town, soon after an earthquake. This latest discovery leads people to speculate whether the feral strange man is linked to the natural disaster that took place in their small community. Eblahan crafts an allegory on the relationship between humanity and our environment as he delves into eco-centric and modern-day discourse through a dystopian-like narrative. For viewers interested in peculiar and otherworldly stories, Vox Humana may be a satisfying tale of re-imagining humanity’s parasitic dynamics with Mother Nature and within our societal landscapes.
Anak Macan (“My Plastic Mother”) (2025)
Amar Haikal’s Anak Macan (“My Plastic Mother”) (2025) is a meditative short that drifts through the world of a young boy growing up beside a sprawling landfill, where memories of his late mother linger in the scraps he salvages from the trash. Against the relentless pull of both nature and forgetting, he searches for something that can fill the void left by his mother, who is already half-forgotten by the world. The film mirrors poetic realism, using raw, tactile imagery to mirror how grief accumulates like remnants and debris. Early in its festival journey, it received a Momo Film Co. Distribution Grant for its social resonance and has since been nominated for Best Short Film at the 2025 Festival Film Indonesia.
That’s a wrap!
As QCinema enters its final stretch, there is still time to catch the screenings of the remaining titles before the curtains fall on November 23. Whether you’re seeking international standouts, local gems, or daring short-form visions, our VantPicks are a guide to some of the festival’s most compelling offerings.
