#TheaterPH - Reel Talk: Rating Every Short Films in Cinemalaya 22
I gave myself a deadline that only an indie film addict would call "fun": nine full-length features and ten shorts, all in three days, all in the name of chasing that Balanghai trophy energy. My legs are tired, my popcorn budget is dead, and my group chats are full of voice notes where I just scream about a scene. Ten filmmakers, one shared mandate to make every second count, and ten wildly different answers to what that means.
Cinemalaya 22: Reel Reflections runs until August 18, 2026, with screenings at Red Carpet Cinemas in Shangri-La Plaza, Gateway Cineplex 18, and select Ayala Malls cinemas. Tickets are ₱350 regular and ₱250 for students, and you can grab yours onsite or straight from the cinemas' own booking pages — shorts are sold as a set (Set A or Set B), never individually, so plan your marathon accordingly. Here's how my ten went, from the ones that wrecked me in the best way to the ones that just didn't quite land.
5/5 — Elenita, Elena, Elaine (dir. Gabriela Serrano)
This is the kind of short that makes you forget it's only a short. Three women, a pop idol easing into retirement, a jaded call center agent, and a wide-eyed fresh grad, get tangled together in a way that toys with genre without ever losing its emotional spine. Agot Isidro anchors the piece with a performance that's all restraint and devastation, while the writing keeps folding timelines and identities into each other until you're not sure whose dream you're watching anymore.
What got me wasn't the sci-fi scaffolding, it was how personal the ache underneath it felt like watching every version of a woman she almost became. Direction here is confident, unhurried, and completely in control of its own strangeness. This is the one I'm still thinking about at 2am.
5/5 — Honey, My Love, So Sweet (dir. JT Trinidad)
Set inside a crumbling early-2000s Manila movie house on the verge of demolition, this coming-of-age piece had no business hitting me this hard in under twenty minutes. An androgynous kid named Life befriends the projectionist's son and, in that friendship, stumbles into a confusing, tender fascination that's really about first understanding who they are.
The production design does so much quiet storytelling — the flicker of the projector, the smell-you-can-almost-feel of an old cinema and the direction trusts silence the way only someone telling a deeply personal story can. It's specific in a way that somehow becomes universal. Anyone who ever found themselves through a screen before they found themselves in real life will feel seen.
4.5/5 — Silkscreen (dir. Rey Anthony Villaverde)
There's a version of this story that could've been pure nostalgia bait, and I'm glad this isn't that. Roy is barely keeping his family's shirt-printing shop alive, weighed down by both dwindling orders and the silence between him and his father, the shop's original owner. When an unfinished design finally gets printed, ink becomes the thing that says what neither man can.
The craft on display, the textures, the practical grime of a real working shop, the way the camera lingers on hands instead of faces during the reconciliation — is what pushes this from good to nearly great. My only gripe is a pace that occasionally lingers a beat too long, but the emotional payoff earns almost every minute.
4/5 — The River Flows In Different Places (dir. Lot-Lot Hermosura)
A documentary entry that trades melodrama for patience, letting its subjects and their landscapes do the talking. What impressed me most is the restraint. No manipulative score swells, no forced narration doing the audience's thinking for them.
It simply observes, and in observing, it says something quietly profound about how the same water can mean survival to one community and memory to another. It's not the flashiest entry in the lineup, but its confidence in stillness is its own kind of craft.
3.5/5 — Para Paraan (dir. Mae Chan Li)
This human rights-driven documentary tackles subject matter that demands to be taken seriously, and it largely succeeds at making you sit with discomfort instead of looking away. The access the filmmaker got is genuinely impressive, and there are individual moments of real gut-punch clarity.
It occasionally leans into a more conventional, straightforward documentary shape when the material seemed to want something more formally daring, but as advocacy filmmaking, it does its job and does it with integrity.
3.5/5 — Kung Paano Kakalas (dir. Joseph Vitali)
A slice-of-life documentary that finds its power in the mundane — the small, repeated gestures of people trying to unstick themselves from circumstances that keep them stuck.
It's honest filmmaking, and there's clear care in how it was shot and assembled. Where it loses a bit of momentum for me is in structure; a few sequences feel like they're building toward a bigger emotional turn that never quite arrives. Still worth your time for its sincerity alone.
3.5/5 — Hoy Hoy Ingat (dir. Norvin de los Santos)
Grief-stricken siblings Baby and Bhing go to increasingly reckless lengths to reclaim their family jeepney, and the film wraps that fight in a surprising layer of magic realism and dark humor. I loved the audacity of tonal mixing here, whimsy sitting right next to real desperation even when the execution doesn't always fully land the landing.
The performances carry a lot of the tonal whiplash, and mostly, they carry it well. A little more polish in the edit and this could've climbed higher on my list.
3/5 — The Keeper (dir. Nolan Rae Fabular & TRNZ)
An animated psychological piece about a woman guarding a trophy hall she's built to perfection, unraveled the moment an intruder threatens her order. Visually, this is one of the most distinct entries in the program.
The animation style has real personality, and the metaphor of control versus organic life is a smart one. My hesitation is that the metaphor stays a little too abstract for its own runtime; I wanted one more emotional anchor to fully feel the stakes rather than just admire the concept from a distance.
3/5 — RUNO! (dir. Lysa Catolico & Jazmine Gin Pateña)
Already a festival darling after premiering at the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival, this animated tale follows a dog navigating a post-apocalyptic Philippines in search of her owner. It's undeniably charming, and there's real technical ambition in building out that ravaged world. For me, the emotional beats felt a touch familiar.
We've seen "loyal animal companion perseveres" before and I wanted the post-apocalyptic setting to do more narrative heavy lifting than it ultimately did. Still an easy crowd-pleaser, just not a personal gut-punch.
3/5 — Sorbetes (dir. Jennissie Gilbuena)
A drama that carries real sincerity but plays things fairly safe in both story and form. The performances are earnest, and there are individual images that stick with you, but the overall arc felt like it was reaching for a bigger emotional swing than what actually landed on screen. Not a bad watch by any means. Just the one that had the hardest time standing out in a program this stacked.
Rating these ten was genuinely difficult, which honestly says everything about how strong this year's shorts program is. Even my "lowest" scores this year would've been standouts in a weaker lineup. If you only have time for one set before the festival wraps, go with whichever one has Elenita, Elena, Elaine or Honey, My Love, So Sweet — but really, book both sets if you can swing it.
Catch these before Cinemalaya 22: Reel Reflections closes on August 18, 2026, at Red Carpet Cinemas (Shangri-La Plaza), Gateway Cineplex 18, and select Ayala Malls, or grab tickets online.
Now excuse me while I go recover from three days of back-to-back indie cinema and an alarming amount of AC exposure.
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