The Ravagers

Senator Gabriel Alcaraz is preparing to deliver a privilege speech alleging corruption in the highest levels of government. On his way to the Senate, he gets wind of a plot against him. The police seek to arrest him for his part in an operation decades ago. Suspecting that the administration isn’t willing to give him a fair trial, Alcaraz goes into hiding abroad, hoping to find a way to clear his name and eventually return to his family. Back home, an old colleague is put in charge of finding him, and his family suffers under the pressure of public scrutiny.

The children living in a Philippines ghetto grow up too fast, dealing with the cruel world where they have to be responsible for their own lives. But they have bright, innocent and good dreams in their hearts. The reality on the streets of capitalism is, however, too harsh to hold on to these dreams.

In her bouts to help her daughter, Teresa accidently lands on a call center job where Regina is employed, giving her a chance (or is it really?) to rekindle her relationship with her daughter. In the call center, she meets people coming from different walks of life; fun-loving Richie, young-living Lolay, prim and proper Martin, and their monster Team Leader Vince.

In a quaint provincial town, an elderly man awaits his inevitable fate.

Rashid Ali returns to his Maguindanao hometown after studying and working for more than 25 years in Barcelona, Spain. Idealistic, he dreams of using what he learned in Europe to improve the lives of his people. But nothing has changed since he left. Politicians remain corrupt, poverty is widespread, his people desperate.

When bandits capture the wife of a US army lieutenant stationed in the Philippines, along with her lover, the choice is his whether to forgive.

On a storm-ravaged island that has seen its share of tragedy, a person who had been assumed dead reappears and ignites a frenzy of reactions, ranging from ecstatic religious fervor to fear.

An ex-seminarian slash communist runs a hotel in Baguio. He then meets a handsome upcoming lawyer. A once-a-year trip to Baguio by the lawyer and conversations with the hotel owner develop into an affair which encompasses decades of socio-political changes in the country.

Trisha, a Filipino transgender woman, suddenly dies while being crowned in a beauty pageant. Her last wish was to be presented as a different celebrity on each night of her wake, but her conservative father wants to bury her as a man.

A young woman tired of being the rebound girl makes rules for herself to avoid that situation. But she is immediately challenged when she makes a connection with another heartbroken young man.

Pandanggo has three stories with parallel themes converging in one event, the Kasilonawan Festival in Obando: a career woman learning to dance tango who is torn between her dance partner and live-in partner has to choose the man who will satisfy her dream of raising a family; a wife whose wish to conceive a baby boy to make her husband happy brings her feet to the festival, but fate has other plans of bringing the child into her life; and a modern woman who, amidst her medical condition that might render her childless for the rest of her life, finds connection with an ancient lore about fertility.