Compelling narratives unfold across 33 short films at QCinema
Some people prefer full-length films, but I have a deep appreciation for short features. There’s an art to telling a complete, moving story within such a limited time—every frame, word, and sound must matter.
There’s something about short films that captivates me—the way they condense emotions, stories, and atmosphere into such a brief span. In just a few minutes, they can reveal entire worlds, leaving a lasting impact through their precision and intensity.
Just imagine my delight as the QCShorts International section of the QCinema International Film Festival (QCIFF) showcases 33 short films from 21 countries.
Building on the theme “Film City,” the QCShorts International is curated into six thematic programs, with the lineup spanning different genres such as experimental cinema, animation, documentary, and fiction.
Proving that the short form remains one of the most daring and immediate ways to tell stories, this QCIFF component highlights the short film as a powerful space for artistic and social dialogue.
“The expansion of QCinema’s short film program is part of the festival’s commitment to leveraging the short film as a form for experimentation and storytelling while also honoring how it has been involved in much larger global conversations, especially as a city of film,” said programmer and film critic Jason Tan Liwag.
Within QCShorts International is a competition section featuring six local homegrown shorts, which received grants from QCinema, competing alongside 15 Southeast Asian films. These films are distributed across four programs.
Taking its title from Eve Driver’s poetry collection, Program 1: This Vast Artifice opens five Southeast Asian shorts that examine the fragility and illusions of urban utopia. From the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand, these films follow innocence, hope, dreams, and desires as they collide with the modern city. Featured are As If To Nothing, Honey, My Love, So Sweet, Please P(r)ay Attention, Surface Tension, and Yelo.
Program 2: The Center Cannot Hold, inspired by Elyn Saks’ memoir, gathers five shorts that confront resistance amid personal and societal breakdowns. From Indonesia, Myanmar, and Philippine provinces, these stories unfold within fractured realities where grief meets hope, repression meets liberation, and madness meets clarity. Films include A Metamorphosis, Hoy, Hoy, Ingat!, Si Kara: Ang Babaye Nga Nag Daba-Daba, Vox Humana, and When the Blues Goes Marching In.
Program 3: This Is Where I Leave You turns to stories bound by the weight of abandonment. Set in familiar yet fading landscapes, these films explore letting go of home, memory, and love, and the quiet spaces where endings hint at new beginnings. Featured titles include Agapito, Before the Sea Forgets, Grandma Nai Who Played Favorites, Sammi, Who Can Detach His Body Parts, and Visiting Heaven Gate.
Program 4: We Were Once Small Things unites six coming-of-age shorts from Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines. Vibrant and personal, these stories follow children navigating ancestry, land, loneliness, loss, and intimacy. The lineup includes Baby Fat, In the Valley, Little Rebels Cinema Club, My Plastic Mother, Ours Was A Timeless Night Burning, and RUNO!.
Beyond competition titles, QCinema presents two QCShorts Expo programs. Unthinkable Atrocities showcases award-winning works dealing with horrors—Lovecraftian, folkloric, censored, and real-world. Auteurs include Mattie Do, Jocelyn Charles, Mohammed Almughanni, Neo Sora, Maryam Tafakory, and Christopher Radcliff.
The newly added sixth program, Unhealthy Fixations, marks the return of 2024 QCinema grantees with shorts on parental failure, trauma, surveillance, climate change, workplace equity, and body insecurities. Films are Refrain, Alaga, RAMPAGE! (o ang parada), Water Sports, Kinakausap ni Celso ang Diyos, and Supermassive Heavenly Body.
Tickets are P250 per program. QCinema runs from Nov. 14 to 23, 2025, at Gateway, Trinoma, Eastwood, Fisher Mall, Cloverleaf, and Robinsons Galleria. Visit qcinema.ph for details.
