With the imminent death of his autocratic grandfather, coinciding with the burgeoning oppressive regime of Ferdinand Marcos, Servando Monzon III, inheritor of the hacienda and businesses of his powerful clan, agonizes on becoming the new feudal lord and capitulating with Marcos’ designs to control the Philippines. He is aware of his clan’s long history of violence; he knows the very violent history of his county; and he foresees a very violent future with the Marcos dictatorship.
A young woman recalls how her father (a fallen priest), her mother (a woman with a secret past) and her teenage sister returned with her to live in their ancestral home after the family business failed. She was plagued with mysterious problems of sleepwalking and began a romance with a young man who tried to cure her.
In the year 2050, the Philippines braces for the coming of the fiercest storm ever to hit the country. And as the wind and waters start to rage, poets are being murdered.
Tomas, the old venerable mayor of the remote town of Kawalan, learns that the invading Japanese will set up a garrison there. He organizes willing members in his community to set up a hidden settlement in the middle of the forest, where they can live unaffected by the horrors of war. As a young revolutionary during the 1896 fight against Spain and then as a soldier fighting against the Americans, Tomas had witnessed the effects of violence on people and become a pacifist. Now, he must see if inhabitants of the hidden settlement can escape the sufferings wrought by the war.
It is in the culture of the Filipinos that when a person dies, you can whisper and send your wishes to the dead. The film is about a family who happens to take care of their ailing mother / grandmother. They see this as a burden in their lives and they wait for her death so they could whisper their wishes.
Four high school friends hatch a plan for a farcical heist that sends them spiraling into a series of surreal events littered with clowns, fast food, and ‘rakenrol’, in an even more absurd nation of squalor and entertainment.
Depicting the struggles of Filipinos in rural areas under the brutal Marcos regime, a family of poor farmers tries to overcome the challenges brought on by corruption and greed for power spanning 1971 to 1987.
Madmen control Manila in 2034 after massive volcanic eruptions have plunged Southeast Asia into darkness.
To this day, Ishmael Bernal's movie Himala is still in our town, in our world. This will be reflected in the broader perspective of the majority, of the surrounding events. Beliefs still lie in the truth. Consciousness is still dominant at the level of illusion. The naive, savage, cruel, and selfish politics still prevail.