Movies by Lui Manansala
Antonio's Secret
The story about a teenage boy, Antonio, whose emerging gay sexuality alienates him from his friends and family, until his libertine uncle, Jonbert, comes to live with him and his mother.
Naked Under the Moon
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.
I America
A complex half-Pinay, half-Caucasian lady looking for American living in Olongapo City (Philippines) who tries to get her passport and US visa in order to meet her father personally for the first time.
Amok
The bustling and sweltering rugged intersection of Pasay Rotonda serves as the main setting for this story of interconnected fate and destiny. As a raging man's bullets strays into different directions, the fate of several different characters are sealed and determined. As the temperature rises, the tension escalates and the story unravels with unforgiving immediacy and explodes in the end as each one struggles to survive and escape their inevitable end.
Hiblang Abo
Infinite struggles among four men in their twilight years, confined in a hospice facility or home for the aged. Their gray hair grows and fades unnoticed, their lives enter the void of oblivion. Everything unfolds so naturally into their swan song until their body pains and heartaches yield the same intensity, when their hearing and their feelings become permanently impaired; and when their blurry vision and memories become “clear” signs that the inevitable state of death is as fleeting as the vibrancy of life itself.
Scarecrow
The search for a missing watch instigates the painful quest for the truth in Belyn’s and her son’s life.
Grandma Loleng
A young woman goes back to her province in the countryside where she gets to once again meet her Grandmother Loleng - a distant relative and a senile parol (Christmas lantern) artisan. Together, they will explore Grandma Loleng’s landscape of memories, only to unearth her innermost secrets and wartime experiences. It is about memory and forgetting, both in the context of the personal and of the national consciousness.
Where I Am King
A grandfather is on the brink of bankruptcy and brings his grandchildren back to the community that made nd shaped him, only to find that the place is no longer the same.
Finding You
Love in the time of hyperthymesia.
Mga Mumunting Lihim
The death of Mariel was met with such hurt by her three closest friends. But it was her best friend, Carla that she leaves a most special gift, a box full of her diaries through the years. Carla has been Mariel’s friend since their high school years; they have practically shared everything in their lives together. Their two other girl friends, Sandra and Olive formed the quartet who would get together ever so often and served as a mutual support system. Despite warnings from Sandra and Olive not to read the diaries left behind by Mariel,...
Dog Nation
Amid legalized corruption, a son struggles to prove to his father that he is fit to survive in a dog-eat-dog society.
Minsan May Isang Puso
Boyet Palacios is a teenage boy whose family used to be middle class. Reversal of fortune happens after the father gets sick and becomes a vegetable confined to his bed.
Pa-siyam
After their mother's death, her adult children gather in their family home to respect the funereal rite of Pa-sayim. Although they had originally thought she died of natural causes, thy soon realize that a dark force in he home may have played a part in her demise.
Mga Anak ng Kamote
Set in the Philippines, 2052, the planting of kamote (sweet potatoes) has been outlawed and those caught planting and selling kamote are put in jail, no thanks to the Kamote Planting Regulation Act
Water Lemon
A story set in a coastal Quezon town where the mundane lives of a grieving widow, her socially-handicapped son and a helpless grandfather interconnect to create bumps in their flatline lives.
Tired Melodies
Set in the 1970s, Angela, a college student, returns to her ancestral home to care for her ailing grandmother. She argues with her eccentric mother within the old house’s walls, slowly uncovering hidden truths about her family’s tumultuous past and drawing her into a personal and political labyrinth from which she must find her path out.
Ned's Project
An itinerant tattoo artist joins a talent reality show for lesbians in the hopes of winning the prize money that will enable her to get artificially inseminated and achieve her lifelong dream of becoming a mother.