The latest Puregold CinePanalo entries take their characters through very different kinds of journeys: a farmer and his carabao making the long trip from the countryside to Manila, a father trying to stretch P1,000 for his son’s birthday, and a Filipino worker in Japan confronted with death and the question of what makes life worth holding on to.
Here are three short takes on three of this year’s full-length films: “Beast,” “Wantawsan” and “Mono No Aware.”
‘Beast’: A slow, strange journey with a carabao
“Beast” follows aging farmer Omeng (John Arcilla) as he leaves the countryside with his carabao, Bob, and heads to Manila in search of his estranged niece after being displaced from the land he has worked. Director Lawrence Fajardo takes his time with the journey, letting Omeng encounter different people along the way while quietly showing the effects of development and the growing distance between rural and urban life.
There’s something telling about how Omeng and Bob become equally out of place in Manila. Even a carabao, the country’s national animal, suddenly has no place in a city that has moved on from the world they came from.
That tension comes through when, on their way to Intramuros, influencers turn Omeng and Bob into content, treating their presence as a spectacle rather than a person’s difficult situation. The scene makes its point early, though its long take can become exhausting. Arcilla makes the slow journey easier to sit through, playing Omeng with small expressions and a quiet sense of wonder.
Bob is a charming idea, but the decision to use AI to make the carabao literally mouth his lines doesn’t always work. The effect can look awkward enough to pull you out of the story, especially when the voice performance itself is already doing much of the work.
The film eventually turns more pronouncedly to fantasy, offering an ending that seems like a dreamlike escape from everything that has made Omeng and Bob feel out of place. After spending so much time building the realities of their displacement, the ending feels less satisfying than what came before it. For all its unevenness, Beast still finds something human in the journey of Omeng and Bob, especially in the quiet moments when the two are simply moving through a world that no longer seems to have a place for them.
‘Wantawsan’: Philippine patronage as dark comedy
Joseph Abello’s “Wantawsan” takes P5,000 and turns it into an entire day of problems. Chito (Joross Gamboa), a cash-strapped father, receives the money from the mayor he helped during the campaign and plans to use it for his son’s birthday. But after someone he owes takes part of the money, Chito is left with just P1,000. From there, his attempt to give his son a birthday celebration becomes a day-long scramble.
Gamboa is the film’s biggest asset, selling both the comedy and frustration of a man constantly trying to make ends meet. More interesting are the moments when the jokes fall away and you see how tired Chito actually is. Rita Daniela, Zion Cruz and Alwyn Uytingco also give the family a sense of dealing with problems much bigger than the money in Chito’s pocket.
Chito’s faith in the mayor gives the story a sharper edge. He genuinely believes that the person he supported will help him when he needs it, and there is something painfully familiar in how that trust can be exploited. Wantawsan occasionally pushes its situations too far and explains points the story has already made, but its ending resists the more obvious dramatic route.
For all the trouble that keeps finding him, the movie remains most interested in what happens between a father and son: how Chito holds on to what little he has, and to the trust of the one person whose disappointment matters most. But Wantawsan also leaves you with a thousand things to ponder about the system that make people like Chito depend on favors from those in power just to get by.
‘Mono No Aware’: A tender portrait of impermanence
BC Amparado’s “Mono No Aware” follows Ichi (Juan Karlos), a Filipino migrant worker in Japan who cleans the homes of people who have died alone. His work brings him to George (Perry Dizon), an elderly widower, and their unexpected connection puts two people at very different points in life into conversation with each other.
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Juan Karlos gives Ichi an elusive quality that makes him immediately relatable. His Japanese sounds as natural as his Bisaya and Tagalog, and the effortless shifts between them make Ichi’s life between Japan and the Philippines feel genuinely lived. As an OFW, he is trying to sustain a life back home while building one abroad, carrying worries that never quite stay on the other side of the sea.
George, meanwhile, is further along in a life that has already taken much from him. Dizon brings a quiet warmth to the character, while Momoko Kobayashi’s Mori offers another perspective on care. Their different circumstances give the film its emotional weight without requiring the characters to explain themselves.
There is a distinctly Japanese sensibility to Amparado’s treatment: muted spaces and long stretches of silence recall the contemplative pace of Japanese cinema. It can be beautiful, but at 129 minutes, the film is also a test of patience.
That pace gives room for the film’s meditation on mono no aware: not simply that everything passes, but what it means to live with the knowledge that nothing stays the same. Ichi, George and Mori each reckon with that impermanence in their own way, and the film finds something tender in simply allowing us to sit with them as they do.
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The Puregold CinePanalo Film Festival 2026 opened on September 23 and will run until October 4 at Gateway Cineplex 18, TriNoma, Fairview Terraces, Ayala Malls Feliz, Ayala Malls Circuit, Ayala Malls Manila Bay and Market! Market!
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