15 Feature Films you shouldn’t miss at the 12th QCinema International Film Festival 2024

By Asian Film Festival on November 8, 2024 • ( Leave a comment )

These are our fifteen recommended feature films from the QCinema International Film Festival (Philippines), which will take place from November 8 – 17, 2024 across Gateway Cineplex 18, Ayala Malls Cinema at Trinoma, Red Carpet at Shangri-la Plaza, and Powerplant Mall.

A Samurai in Time by Junichi Yasuda – Japan | 2024 – 131 minutes

The samurai swordsman Kosaka Shinzaemon (Makiya Yamaguchi) is in the middle of a life-and-death duel when he is suddenly struck by lightning. He is transported forward in time, and finds himself in present-day Kyoto, amid a film set shooting a Jidaigeki, a samurai film. Mistaken for an extra, Shinzaemon quickly becomes part of the film industry, redirecting his talents for an age without Samurai. (QCinema 2024)

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All We Imagine As Light by Payal Kapadia – France, India, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands | 2024 – 118 minutes

In the vibrant, chaotic city of Mumbai, Nurses Prabha, Anu and Parvaty (Kani Kusruti, Divya Prabha and Chhaya Kadam) are dealing with issues that have to do with the men in their lives. Prabha tangles with the past when her estranged husband suddenly sends her a rice cooker from Germany. Anu is fretting over her relationship with her Muslim boyfriend, which is a source of gossip around the hospital. And the older, widowed Parvaty is on the verge of being evicted, her husband having not left her the right documentation to prove her right as a resident.

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Blue Sun Palace by Constance Tsang – USA | 2024 – 117 minutes

Winner of the French Touch Prize at Cannes Critic Week. Taiwanese Amy (Wu Ke-Xi) and Chinese mainlander Didi (Min Han Hsieh) are immigrants working in a massage parlor in New York’s Chinatown. The two share a bond over loss and a common dream – to move away from their present circumstances and start a business of their own. Recalling Tsai Ming-liang’s slow cinema, Blue Sun Palace is an unusual exploration of the American immigrant experience.

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Don’t Cry, Butterfly by Dương Diệu Linh – Vietnam, Indonesia, Philippines, Singapore | 2024 – 97 minutes

Tam (Lê Tú Oanh) discovers in a very public way that her husband has been having an affair. Not really knowing how to deal with it, she turns to the aid of “The Master,” a mystic who promises that she might use magical means to win him back. She tumbles into the world of Vietnamese mysticism, all while her daughter prepares to leave home to seek a better life elsewhere.

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Happyend by Neo Sora – Singapore, UK, USA | 2024 – 112 mintes

In the near future, in a dystopian Japan that has harnessed the fear of an impending disaster to enact all manner of subtly fascistic policy, a group of teenagers try to find ways to enjoy their youth, getting into all sorts of trouble along the way. Happyend tells a story of the future, but is very much rooted in the experience of the past, dissecting Japan’s penchant for nostalgia, and how it affects the younger generations facing an unknowable tomorrow.

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Lost Sabungeros by Bryan Kristoffer J. Brazil – Philippines | 2024 – 90 minutes

During the pandemic lockdown, cockfighting in the Philippines moved online. This new, lucrative avenue for the local gambling industry came with some violent consequences, as over thirty sabungeros were mysteriously abducted, never to be seen again. Lost Sabungeros examines these disappearances, interviewing the families of the victims, and looking into the dark underbelly of cockfighting, and its ties with people in power.

My Sunshine by Hiroshi Okuyama – Japan, France | 2024 – 90 minutes

Adolescent hockey player Takuya (Keitatsu Koshiyama) has grown to feel out of place playing the sport. His attention has turned to figure skater Sakura (Kiara Nakanishi), a rising star from Tokyo. Her coach, Arakawa (Sosuke Ikematsu), sees the potential in Takuya, and pushes him to join Sakura as a partner. The three form a strong bond, only to be challenged as societal pressures push on them. Gentle and humanist in a way that invites comparisons to Kore-eda, My Sunshine relies on sweetness to make bitter medicine go down.

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No Other Land by Rachel Szor, Yuval Abraham, Hamdan Ballal, Basel Adra – Norway, Palestine | 2024 – 92 minutes

Basel Adra is a Palestinian activist who grew up in the Apartheid conditions imposed by Israel on Palestine. Yuval Abraham is an Israeli journalist who has made it his mission to let people know about the plight of the people from Adra’s village. The two become unlikely friends, and along with the other members of a filmmaking collective, they have put together a documentary that studies the current Israeli occupation of Palestine.

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Phantosmia by Lav Diaz – Philippines | 2024 – 250 minutes

Ronnie Lazaro plays Hilarion Zabala, a retired soldier who suffers from phantosmia: a lingering, phantom smell, seemingly conjured up by his own mind, keeping him from living a normal life. As a treatment, his doctor recommends he re-enter the service, such that he will be better able to confront his past and deal with the psychological issues that bring about the malady. He is assigned to a remote island, where he is confronted with the violent reality of the present.

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Pooja, Sir by Deepak Rauniyar – Nepal, Norway, USA | 2024 – 115 minutes

In the Nepalese border town of Rajagunj, Inspector Pooja (Asha Magrati) arrives from Kathmandu to investigate the abduction of two boys. Finding that the local Madhesi population is hesitant to cooperate with her, she enlists the help of Madhesi policewoman Mamata (Nikita Chandak). This crime thriller examines the current state of Nepal, dissecting ethnic tensions that have created a split population, and the misogyny and bigotry that pervades the landscape.

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Simon of the Mountain by Federico Luis – Argentina, Chile, Mexico, Uruguay | 2024 – 96 minutes

Winner of the Grand Prize at Cannes’ Critics Week. Lorenzo Ferro plays Simon, a young man whose behavior is so unusual that no one seems to object when he falls in with a group of intellectually disabled people from a local center. His mother (Laura Nevole) insists that he doesn’t have a disability: that all the tics and odd tendencies are just things he’s making up. Playing at that ambiguity, the movie sits in discomfort, sketching out a world where no one is quite sure what is real.

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Sujo by Fernanda Valadez, Astrid Rondero – Mexico, France, USA | 2024 – 127 minutes

When Sujo (Juan Jesús Varela) was just four years old, his father, a cartel gunman, was killed. Growing up in the Mexican countryside, there is no avoiding the presence of the cartel. And as Sujo comes of age, he is faced with what feels like an inevitability: to take up arms and work for the cartel, becoming part of the violent cycle that took his father away from him.

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Tale of the Land by Loeloe Hendra – Indonesia, Philippines, Qatar, Taiwan | 2024 – 99 minutes

May (Shenina Cinnamon), a Dayak girl, has not stepped on land for a decade. She lost her parents over a land conflict, and has since been living in a floating house with Tuha (Arswendi Nasution), an old man that saved her life. The trauma has stayed with her, causing her to break into a fit whenever she tries to return to land. But as she meets new people, and gains a new animal companion, her desire to return to solid ground and break what she believes is a curse grows stronger.

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The Major Tones by Ingrid Pokropek – Argentina, Spain | 2023 – 101 minutes

14-year-old Ana (Sofía Clausen) has a metal plate in her arm from an accident in childhood. Over winter holiday in Buenos Aires, she starts to feel mysterious pulses in her arm. A tumultuous night wandering the city leads her to discover that the pulses are actually Morse code. She becomes determined to decode the message, taking her on the path that leads away from her family and friends.

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Viet and Nam by Truong Minh Quy – Philippines, Vietnam, Singapore, France, Netherlands, Germany, Italy, USA | 2024 – 129 minutes

Nam and Viet (Phąm Thanh Hài and Đào Duy Bào Đįnh) work together in a coal mine, finding respite from their dangerous work in each other’s arms. In their fleeting moments together, they share dreams of a better life, knowing full well that there is a time limit to their relationship. Dreamlike and hypnotic, Viet and Nam mines the depths of a nation’s trauma, filtered through the experience of queer love.

For more information, please visit: https://qcinema.ph/