Mark Dionisio

Ma’ Rosa has four children. She owns a small convenient store in a poor neighborhood of Manila where everybody likes her. To make ends meet, Rosa and her husband, Nestor, resell small amounts of narcotics on the side. One day, they get arrested. Rosa’s children are ready to do anything to buy their parents’ freedom from the corrupt police.

An intimate epic made with uncompromising and austere seriousness that patiently and methodically observes the collapse and hopeful revival of a poor farming clan.

When Chris arrives at the village of T'boli in lake Sebu, South Cotabato, he thought he has left his dark recent past behind. He is working on commission as a video documentarist to make a profile on the women T'boli and their changing views on multiple marriages. The most affluent men, called Datu, marry more than once and each time pays dowry to the family of the women they marry. When a young T'boli woman, Ngapon, tells Chris that she wants to be free from a marriage that was set by her parents and to go to Manila, Chris begins to confront waht he left in the city. Like the proud Datu with many wives, Chris has Denver, a bronze skinned lover in Manila, who is proud of his relationships. Denver lives with Chris in an apartment as partners yet he still goes into sexual and emotional relationships with other men. Ngapon's quest for freedom becomes Chris journey to a very sad dark past. - Written by Anonymous