Somewhere along the coastal waters of Masinloc, Zambales, young Sita talks to her mother about her experience of nearly drowning. As the town’s fisherfolk speak up against the encroachment of Chinese fishing vessels, director Maria Estela Paiso fills the screen with mesmerizing shapes of resistance, gestures of solidarity, and textures of rage.

Dadong, a retired policeman, finds it hard to accept that his pregnant daughter Mila is getting married to her coworker Noel. He insists that, after the wedding, the couple must stay in his home, to which Mila and Noel reluctantly agree. Tensions arise as Dadong terrorizes the household with his demands, and every attempt to resist is met with a threat. Widely considered one of the finest Filipino films of all time, Mike De Leon’s adaptation of Nick Joaquin’s true crime story “The House on Zapote Street” renders a chilling depiction of an authoritarian figure whose desire for power knows no bounds, echoing the terrors of the Marcos regime in the 1970s and 1980s.