7 Films to Celebrate Buwan ng Wika
7 Films to Celebrate Buwan ng Wika
Feature art by Jacob Angeles
Buwan ng Wika is more than a commemoration of the legislation of the national language. It’s a celebration of diversity, identity, and history. The importance of language has ever been evident during times of colonization, until recent contemporary developments and struggle for democracy.
The relevance of the national language and the many native languages across the Philippine archipelago is challenged by marginalization, discontinuation of the mother tongue education, and the removal of the general education curriculum. Undermining the purpose of language also means silencing and censoring stories and the ways in which they are told.
Language reflects the social realities and the stories that come with it. This list celebrates the country’s national language, as well as its many native languages, and how storytelling comes into fruition in the languages they used to overcome the struggle of their own identity to a realized better future.
Film still from like people, they change too
like people, they change too (2022)
Dir. JT Trinidad
Remembering past places and memories when growing up means more than for nostalgia's sake, but also learning that the wider grand scale of things that occur, more than one’s personal memories, but also the shared spaces people once shared, are now displaced and gone. JT Trinidad’s like people, they change too made memory a political motive. Memories of once youthful happiness are now intersected with ideas of capitalism, which places and memories once shared with that idea have now become private and commodified. To realize that these far too common occurrences and manifestations of capitalism have already embedded and slowly decayed in one’s or the people’s imagination of shared spaces. — Christ Dustly Go Tan
Kurt Alalag and Adrienne Vergara in Tokwifi | Still courtesy of Juanflix
Tokwifi (2019)
Dir. Carla Pulido Ocampo
A tokwifi (Bontok, “star”) falls from the sky in Bontoc, Mountain Province, disrupting the quiet life of shy Limmayug. The “star” is 1950s Tagalog actress Laura Buencaflor who is literally and metaphorically trapped in a black-and-white TV. The odd pair straddle differences in culture, language, and space to forge a lasting connection. Moving performances by Kurt Alalag and Adrienne Vergara make this short film’s glow ethereal and undeniable. The careful script and direction reads as a love letter to Mountain Province from director Carla Pulido Ocampo and her partner-collaborator Lester Valle. — Heather Ann F. Pulido
Film still from Cleaners
Cleaners (2019)
Dir. Glenn Barit
Drawing from his Catholic high school experience, Barit’s breakout coming-of-age film Cleaners captures Filipino high school life in all its messy, awkward, and bittersweet teenage dirtbag glory. Set in 2007 Tuguegarao City, the film follows eight classroom cleaners as they wrestle with the idea of being “clean” in the world of chaos. The film doubles as both a love letter and a deconstruction of the high school movie, resisting mythologization and lingering on raw, naturalistic performances by actual students—because real high school isn't Euphoria or Riverdale. Rendered from more than 40,000 frames printed, photocopied, manually highlighted, Cleaners transformed high school memory into something tactile, kaleidoscopic, and alive. — Dave Jonathan Verbo
Film still from City of Flowers
City of Flowers (2021)
Dir. Xeph Suarez
How can we remember?
After the events of the Zamboanga Siege, director Xeph Suarez takes the memories of the past and turns them into a piece of remembrance — a memory jog to the people of Zamboanga, thus, the City of Flowers was born. Set in 2013, interreligious couple Elena and Nasser, desperately try to survive a devastating low yield to their only source of income, their flower farm. All in hopes of raising money for the birth of their first child. However, as luck would have it, Nasser gets involved in a peaceful rally that would end in razing fires and battle cries, leaving Elena to weep alone in a “city of flowers” that is now shed by blood. — Joshua Osing
A masked child from Turumba | Still courtesy of the Criterion Channel
Turumba (1980)
Dir. Kidlat Tahimik
Set in Pakil, Laguna, this playful yet scathing cinema verité flick is an essential in the oeuvre of Kidlat Tahimik, a known purveyor of Third Cinema and anti-neocolonialist Philippine cinema. The film is told from the point of view of Padu, a young boy who witnesses the gradual encroachment of capitalism into the crevices of a small Philippine town after a German woman commissions a humble business to produce thousands of papier-mâché figurines for the 1972 Munich Olympics. What once was an annual labor of love for the religious Festival of Turumba becomes a circus of exploitation and alienation, often of young children. Turumba then transforms from a seeming slice-of-life piece to a microcosmic fable, a small picture with big ideas, a timeless, tightly-told tale that resonates to this day. Perfumed Nightmare might be Tahimik’s most famous work, but this is his sleekest to date, effortlessly encompassing his singularity as an artist: his ability to critique society and retain his sense of humor while doing so. — Thandie Aliño
Film still from Sa Ilalum sa Balabal sa Alitaptap | Still courtesy of Sine Kabataan
Sa Ilalum sa Balabal sa Alitaptap (2024)
Dir. Juvy Ann Clarito
The film is deeply rooted in its regional backdrop, where landscape and even the unseen histories of the community become part of its language. Here, language takes many forms: spoken dialogue that asserts presence, gestures that bridge what words cannot, and silences that do not soothe but instead expose wounds of displacement and marginalization. Each carefully placed line reminds us that language is never neutral—it can preserve memory, affirm heritage, and challenge erasure. In this way, language becomes resistance, a force that carries the weight of identity and keeps the voices of the minority alive against attempts to silence them. — Emmanuel Pamaylaon
Film Still from Gitling
Gitling (2023)
Dir. Jopy Arnaldo
The collapse of borrowed time, the warmth of a fleeting moment, and the intimacy of being known even within the deafening silence. Set in the city of Bacolod, Jopy Arnaldo’s Gitling is a love letter to the labyrinthine temperament of language. The use of five languages: English, Filipino, Japanese, Hiligaynon, and a made-up language underscores the human capability and need to look for understanding beyond and within these given boundaries. Every verbalized phrase, every line spoken, and every thought rather refrained from utterance is a part of the film’s wider picture—on how language, in its various forms, connects people. What makes it remarkable are its periods of reflection and moments of pensiveness that intuitively devours silence and makes it a subject altogether. There are words beaming out of such quiet frames. Gitling inculcates the audience to find comfort in the differences in languages, not as something that disconnects the world like the Tower of Babel, but as a magnified lens of the one thing people hope for in every relation—a connection. — Yve Ventures
