The Philippines’ QCinema International Film Festival is launching a new competition section, Asian Next Wave, that will focus on emerging filmmakers from the Southeast Asian region.
The new section sees three up-and-coming Filipino directors, who received production funding from the festival, competing with five indie filmmakers from other countries in Southeast Asia.
The three local films in competition are Rae Red’s Babae At Baril, Arnel Barbarona’s Kaaway Sa Sulod and The Cleaners from Glenn Barit, while Southeast Asian titles include Mattie Do’s The Long Walk, which recently played in Venice and Toronto (see full line-up below).
QCinema also showcases Filipino short films in its QCShorts competition and local documentaries in the DocQC section.
The festival, which takes place in the Quezon City district of Metro Manila, runs from October 13-22, 2019. Untrue, from local filmmaker Sigrid Andrea Bernardo, will open the festival, with Anthony Chen’s Wet Season playing as the closing film.
Special screening include Pedro Costa’s Vitalina Varela, Koji Fukada’s A Girl Missing, Tom Waller’s The Cave and Krabi, 2562, co-directed by Ben Rivers and Anocha Suwichakornpong.
The festival’s international section will screen titles such as Nadav Lapid’s Berlin Golden Bear winner Synonyms, François Ozon’s By The Grace Of God, Claire Denis’ High Life and Midi Z’s Nina Wu, which premiered in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard section.
New Horizons for first and second-time filmmakers will screen films such as Nora Fingscheidt’s System Crasher, which won a Silver Bear in Berlin, Tashi Gyeltshen’s The Red Phallus and Chola, from India’s Sanal Kumar Sasidharan.
RainbowQC, a LGBTQ section, has titles including Li Cheng’s Jose, Danielle Lessovitz’ Port Authority and Where We Belong, directed by Thailand’s Kongdej Jaturanrasamee.
Other sections include Rising Wave, which focuses on Asian filmmakers who have recently been gaining international attention; QCinema Reloaded, which will screen some of the festival’s past grantees, and Centennial Classics, celebrating the 100th year of the Philippines’ film industry, showing local works curated by the Film Development Council of the Philippine (FDCP).
QCinema 2019 Asian Next Wave full line-up:
Ave Maryam, dir: Robby Ertanto (Indonesia)
Babae At Baril, dir: Rae Red (Philippines)
The Cleaners, dir: Glenn Barit (Philippines)
Fly By Night, dir: Zahir Omar (Malaysia)
Kaaway Sa Sulod, dir: Arnel Barbarona (Philippines)
The Long Walk, dir: Mattie Do (Laos)
Nakorn-Sawan, dir: Puangsoi Aksornsawang (Thailand)
Suburban Birds, dir: Sheng Qiu (China)
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