7 Filipino films featured in 28th SGIFF

Back for its 28th year, the Singapore International Film Festival (SGIFF) is the longest-running and leading international film platform in Southeast Asia for independent cinema. Seven Filipino films have been selected for the 28th Singapore International Film Festival. “Jodilerks Dela Cruz, Employee of the Month” by Carlo Francisco Manatad, “Suerte” by Carlo Fajarda, “Puppy Love” by Margarita Mina and “The Sound of Coins Hitting Brass” by Andrew Stephen Lee will be in competition at the Silver Screen Awards. Other Filipino films in the official selection are “Salvage: Malay Wild” by Sherad Anthony Sanchez, “The One Armed Executioner” by Bobby A Suarez and cross-country collaboration “In the Claws of A Century Wanting” by Jewel Maranan.

“Jodilerks Dela Cruz, Employee of the Month” is about Jodilerks, a gas station attendant on her last day of duty. She has some plans up her sleeve and the night is still young.

“Suerte” is about two student filmmakers who set out to do a documentary about the circulation of drugs within their city, but as they go on along with their subjects, slowly get involved until the point of no return.

“Puppy Love” tells a story of a young girl on the brink of puberty who wakes up one morning to find that her pet dog has escaped, leaving her with a wound in her vagina. Confused and distraught about her body and what the blood entails, she tries to make sense of herself and her tireless longing.

“The Sounds of Coins Hitting Brass” shows how a young boy comes to understand that his father is a gambling drifter who loiters in laundromats listening to coin change machines that sound like casino slots.

“In the Claws of a Century Wanting” is about the towering presence of Tondo, Manila’s busiest global port, and how it envelops the lives of four individuals who find themselves sharing the same fate when the housing authority demarcates their residence for development.

“Salvage: Malay Wild” is set within a forest in Mindanao, and follows a news crew as it investigates a series of deaths attributed to mythic creatures known as “aswangs.” An encounter with the military sets a nefarious wave of events in motion—they find themselves pursued by an inexplicable violence that proliferates in its manifestations with mounting intensity, leading them down a phantasmagoric purgatory.

The One Armed Executioner (1981) sets an Interpol agent on a punishing path of vengeance after both his arm and newlywed are eliminated by a drug syndicate.