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Jericho Rosales has been tapped by Tba Studios to portray former President Manuel L. Quezon in an upcoming historical film titled Quezon. The project will chart the life of the Filipino lawyer and soldier who led the Commonwealth from 1935 to 1944, offering audiences a closer look at a figure whose legacy continues to spark debate.

Directed and co-written by Jerrold Tarog—whose previous works include Heneral Luna and Goyo: The Boy General—the film is scheduled to begin shooting in March 2025, with plans for a domestic and international release later that year. As part of Tba Studios’ ongoing series centered on Philippine history, the film joins the studio’s celebrated “Bayaniverse” lineup.

Joining Rosales is a cast featuring actors from Tarog’s earlier productions. Mon Confiado returns to portray Emilio Aguinaldo, Quezon’s rival, while Benjamin Alves plays a younger version of the president. The film also includes Karylle Yuzon as Quezon’s wife,...

Exclusive: Philippine production and distribution company Tba Studios has cast Jericho Rosales to play the title role in its upcoming historical biopic Quezon.

Rosales will play Manuel L. Quezon, the Filipino lawyer and soldier who went on to become the President of the Commonwealth of the Philippines from 1935 to 1944.

The film serves as Rosales’ long-awaited return to Philippine cinema after a hiatus of several years; he was last seen on the big screen in 2018 romantic drama The Girl In The Orange Dress. On television, he recently starred in the hit Abs-cbn drama Lavender Fields.

Scheduled to start filming in March 2025, Quezon is directed and co-written by Jerrold Tarog, whose credits include the historical biopics Heneral Luna (2015) and Goyo: The Boy General (2018), both also produced by Tba Studios.

Also starring in Quezon are Mon Confiado and Benjamin Alves, who reprise their roles from Heneral Luna and Goyo: The Boy General. Confiado...

“Mallari” attempts for a certain kind of innovation with a narrative structure freshly lifted off anime-like, parallel-world, time-travel story telling. Leveraging in the fantastic, three generations of stories overlap one another convincingly to tell a ghost story that haunts the titular family for decades. But all of these attempts at novelty to reimagine the lore of a historically documented serial killer from the colonial Philippines? The film seems to be capturing through its creativity an attitude as old as its narrative itself.

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The marvel of Mallari’s technical achievements cannot be ignored. Derrick Cabrido’s years of handling horror films is matched by Enrico Santos‘ veteran penmanship and Pao Orendain‘s textured images that shape the scenes with enough darkness to fill the scares. Santos’ script in particular exhibits a really good pulse in pacing sequences. Their attempt to...

Missed Connections is a film that makes a one-minute scene stretch for 10 minutes with an excessively irritating performance from the female lead, a story that feels more like it belongs to a YouTube video than a movie, and a runtime that drags along for almost 2 hours when it could well have been wrapped in less than 15 minutes. It is surprising to see Netflix produce such a film that struggles throughout its runtime, from the script to the visuals and music. Missed Connections seems like an amateur effort which would still have worked if there was some honesty in its storytelling. It is more sketchy than it is revealing; it doesn’t even manage to look “cinematic,” as termed by many tutorial videos online, and it dies a slow death at its own hands with its underwhelming aesthetics. If cinema is a language, this is the kind of film to which...

This year’s festival will highlight in-person programming at Film at Lincoln Center and Sva Theatre, featuring over 60 world, international, and North American premieres, with many selections also available virtually to fans of Asian cinema across the country.

On August 6, 2021, the New York Asian Film Foundation and Film at Lincoln Center will kick off the 20th edition of the New York Asian Film Festival (Nyaff), a hybrid event with Nyaff’s largest film lineup to date. The Festival will screen over 60 films, both virtually and in person, to audiences in New York and across the country from August 6 – 22, 2021.

Nyaff’s 2021 lineup will include two world premieres, six international premieres, 29 North American premieres, eight U.S. premieres, and nine New York premieres, showcasing the most exciting action, comedy, drama, thriller, romance, horror, and art-house films from East Asia.

Following an unprecedented year in which Covid-19 and increased violence against the Asian...

Releases of movies concerning pandemic experiences were just a matter of time. Though, apart from some experimental shorts keeping creative folk busy during the lockdown and up-to-date documentaries addressing various issues arising in these tough times, I didn’t expect them to arrive so soon. And “Here and There” (Dito at Don) is an interesting harbinger of dealing with the subject. As in Europe and many other places ,we are still far from back to normal, one can expect gloomy, claustrophobic pieces focused on dealing with isolation, loneliness, and fear. However, Jp Habac went for a… pandemic dramedy, definitely more sweet than bitter, shot in warm hues with soft touches of a rom-com. The Filipino director, who with an indie romance “I am drunk, I love you” or a web series “Gaya sa Pelikula” became a chronicler of love and everyday struggles of a young generation, comes back to the...

If your work and personal lives were slowly going down the drain through various avenues and you find something that could take care of some of your worries, albeit unethically, would you use it? That is the conundrum the lead character finds herself in in Rae Red’s solo directorial debut “The Girl and the Gun”.

“The Girl and the Gun” is screening at New York Asian Film Festival

The protagonist, an unnamed Girl, isn’t having the best of lives. Living in Quezon City, she works at a department store but rarely gets to spend her earnings on herself, with most of them going to a demanding mother in the province and on her rent. Even when she is reprimanded by her unnecessarily strict boss for wearing torn stockings or when her colleagues invite her out for drinks, she is unable to meet those demands financially. In spite of her best efforts,...

Carlo Ledesma’s sophomore feature fiction is his first wholehearted venture into the domain of horror movies. Although his previous attempt at horror-“Tunnel” (2011) was labelled as such, it didn’t quite manage to raise as much as an eyebrow. With his majorly praised script penned for Avid Liongoren’s animated fantasy drama “Saving Sally” (2016), the curse was broken, and his talent for suspense became obvious. Three years into the film’s success pretty much owned by its writer, Ledesma returned behind the camera with “Sunod”, a dynamic, nail-biting watch with many twists and turns.

“Sunod” is screening at Udine Far East Film Festival 2020

The core story might sound familiar – a desperate single mother is trying to keep her severely ill daughter alive at all costs, and when the much awaited wonder happens, it comes with frightening consequences. One is fooled into believing that the film will follow the safe horror patterns,...

"Stay forever." Gravitas Ventures has revealedthe new Us trailer for an indie horror survival thriller titled Motel Acacia, the latest from Malaysian-Filipino filmmaker Bradley Liew (Singing in Graveyards). In the cold west, Motel Acacia is tasked with exterminating immigrants by the government through a bed, haunted with the spirit of a Filipino tree demon, that eats men and impregnates women. A young Filipino man, Jc, is groomed by his tyrannical father to take over the business. But he risks losing his own humanity to try and stop what's happening. The horror film stars Jc Santos, Jan Bijvoet, Nicholas Saputra, Agot Isidro, Vithaya Pansringarm, Bront Palarae, and Talia Zucker. This looks totally gnarly! Wtf! A tree demon inside a bed that eats people?! I want to see more of this big bad monster that appears at the end. Hot damn. Here's the official Us trailer (+ two posters) for Bradley Liew's Motel Acacia,...

“Motel Acacia” takes place in America, but not any version of America that Americans will recognize. “Re-elect Roberts!” announces a garish campaign billboard bearing the face of a generic white politician. “We are great again!” Well, it’s easy to guess who that’s referring to and to extrapolate what alternate reality “Motel Acacia” has in mind. This is America as seen from abroad, America as a scary place where ugly white racists don’t just build walls to keep undocumented aliens out; they sacrifice oblivious immigrants to a menacing tree demon.

A what? Tree demons aren’t really a thing in the United States, but they’re a fertile part of Filipino folklore, and given that “Motel Acacia” is actually an Asian co-production from Philippines-based director Bradley Liew (“Singing in Graveyards”), that explains how such a monster would find its way into a movie set in the Northern U.

The film marks Liew’s second feature after Singing In The Graveyards, which premiered in Critics Week at Venice in 2016.

Berlin-based sales outfit Picture Tree International (Pti) has picked up international rights to director Bradley Liew’s genre-bending horror film Motel Acacia. Xyz is co-repping the film for North America.

The film marks Liew’s second feature after Singing In The Graveyards, which premiered in Critics Week at Venice in 2016.

Now in post-production, Motel Acacia is about a young man being groomed to take over the family business – a motel in the Filipino wilderness that seemingly provides shelter to illegal...

The film marks Liew’s second feature after Singing In The Graveyards, which premiered in Critics Week at Venice in 2016.

Berlin-based sales outfit Picture Tree International (Pti) has picked up international rights to director Bradley Liew’s genre-bending horror film Motel Acacia. Xyz is co-repping the film for North America.

The film marks Liew’s second feature after Singing In The Graveyards, which premiered in Critics Week at Venice in 2016.

Now in post-production, Motel Acacia is about a young man being groomed to take over the family business – a motel in the Filipino wilderness that seemingly provides shelter to illegal...

Production has begun on Malaysian director Bradley Liew’s upscale horror film “Motel Acacia.” With a clearly topical message, the film features a hotel bed that eats immigrants.

Actor, Jc Santos called it: “A cautionary tale of what’s going to happen in the future.” Indonesian star, Nicholas Saputra said the he agreed to the role “because of its urgency and relevance.”

The movie has representation in North America through Xyz Films, the sales and production company of Todd Brown. He was also responsible for selecting the concepts to be presented at the International Film Festival and Awards Macao’s project market.

“Set in a fictional snowy United States, the film is about a young Filipino man who is groomed by his tyrannical Caucasian Father to take over Motel Acacia which is tasked with exterminating immigrants by the government through a bed, haunted with the spirit of a Filipino tree demon,...

I have to admit that rom coms is not exactly my cup of tea, as I usually find them superficial to the point of silliness. “Mr and Mrs Cruz”, however, is anything but, particularly due to Sigrid Andrea P. Bernardo’s approach, who treats the film much like a stage play, while also including some tour guide elements.

“Mr and Mrs Cruz” is screening at San Diego Asian Film Festival (Sdaff)

The story revolves around two complete strangers, Raffy and Gela, who take part in a group excursion in Palawan, each on their own. Their common, titular surname, though, has the rest of the group mistaking them for a married couple, with the two of them, eventually going along with it. Raffy is on a trip to remember and Gela on one to forget, and their past, “failed” relationships eventually bring the two closer together, even more so since they...

Xyz Films, the U.S.-based sales agency specializing in genre films, has picked up international rights to Bradley Liew’s elevated horror movie “Motel Acacia.” Xyz will open it up to foreign distributors at this week’s American Film Marketin Santa Monica.

The film is set to start principal photography at the end of November in Philippines and Slovenia. It is targeting a 2019 release.

Malaysian-born, Philippines-based Liew saw his debut feature “Singing in Graveyards” premier at the Venice Film Festival’s Critics Week in 2016. It went on to 30 festivals and won awards in Malaysia and Kolkata.

Set in a fictional snowy U.S., the film is about a young Filipino man who is groomed by his tyrannical Caucasian father to take over a voyeuristic sex motel with a bed that eats men and impregnates women. The screenplay was co-written by Liew and producer Bianca Balbuena, who was last year...