A suicidal manananggal splits in two. The top half wants to die. The bottom half wants to live.
That is the premise of Run Shirley Run!, one of five short films that QCinema, Quezon City’s official film festival, paid ₱700,000 each to make. All five will have their world premieres when the festival’s 14th edition opens on November 13. The manananggal is the Philippine folklore creature whose upper body detaches from its legs to hunt at night, and she is not the strangest thing on this year’s list.
A 1-in-79 Shot
The QCShorts Production Grant funds short films at the script stage, so the festival is betting on projects that do not exist yet. This year it received a record 395 submissions and chose five, which works out to roughly one in 79. Last year the grant was ₱500,000 and the festival picked six projects from 285 entries. The money has gone up 40 percent, and the competition has risen almost as fast.
Since the program began in 2016, QCinema says it has awarded ₱14.85 million to 56 Filipino shorts. Past recipients have taken top prizes at the Gawad Urian (the Manila Film Critics Circle’s annual awards) and the FAMAS (the Filipino Academy of Movie Arts and Sciences awards), and have screened at Berlin, Sundance, Toronto and Locarno.
The selection committee’s own summary of the pile is telling. Artistic director Ed Lejano says more of the strongest entries came from the regions and were rooted in genre, using myth, satire and folklore to make sense of violence, extremism and injustice. Jason Tan Liwag, the festival’s head of short film programming, says QCinema wants to hold space for stories that are “deeply political, regional, and quintessentially Filipino.”
Five Films, and Not a Safe Premise Among Them
Agsangit Laeng ti Al-alia (A Ghost Can Only Howl) is the only period piece. Carla Pulido Ocampo writes and directs this Ilocano period drama (the Ilocanos are the people of northern Luzon) about a young, feminine herbolario, or herbal healer, who puts on his mother’s clothes to join the revolutionary forces, but first has to get past his father’s madness. Ocampo and her producer, Lester Valle, are returning grantees: their 2019 QCShorts project became Tokwifi, a romantic fantasy drama that went on to win awards at QCinema, Cinemalaya, the Gawad Urian and the FAMAS.
Body Works is a lesbian boudoir drama from Maki Makilan, a Negros Occidental-born filmmaker based in Quezon City. A laid-off dishwasher survives by taking a paid romance, until the relationship starts to demand more than a transaction. Earvic Noay, Patti Lapus and Dodo Dayao produce. Makilan’s earlier work circles displacement, queerness and domestic migration.
Maanaa Kanimo (With You) is a queer coming-of-age drama from Toni Cañete of Cagayan de Oro, produced by Tin Velasco and Micah Tadena. A tight-knit community is thrown into disarray when a statue of Mama Mary, the Virgin Mary, disappears, and two sisters confront questions of identity, faith and morality. Cañete has won top prizes from the Cultural Center of the Philippines’ Gawad Alternatibo and the Mindanao Film Festival for work about young women and resistance.
Run Shirley Run! is the one with the manananggal. Rodiell Veloso writes and directs a dark comedy and queer body horror set in Cagayan de Oro, and the plot gets worse for everyone involved: chaos erupts in an ukay-ukay (secondhand clothing) depot when two bumbling aswang hunters and a group of hormonal teenagers stumble into the deadly reunion of the two halves. Veloso cites Takashi Miike, Sion Sono and Julia Ducournau as influences. Rajiv Idnani and Tomomi Furuyama produce.
Sana’y Nandito Ka is the quiet one, and it is animated. Clister Santos writes and directs a slice-of-life drama about a young man reuniting with his estranged mother six years later, produced by Leon Lopez and Alex Poblete. Santos’s debut short, Ili-Ili, premiered in 2023 at the BFI Flare: London LGBTQIA+ Film Festival and won the top animation prize at the Gawad Alternatibo in 2024.
What the List Says About Where Filipino Cinema Is Looking
Read the five together and a pattern shows. Three are queer stories by QCinema’s own description: a lesbian drama, a queer coming-of-age story and a queer body horror. Two are tied to Cagayan de Oro, a city in Mindanao: Cañete is from there, and Veloso sets his film there. One is rooted in Ilocano culture in northern Luzon. Two reach for myth and religion, a manananggal and a vanished statue of the Virgin Mary, to talk about bodies and belief.
None of this reads like a festival picking safe bets. A grant that funds scripts rather than finished films lets the committee take those swings, and the track record suggests it is worth watching what the five do with the money.
Field Notes
When: The 14th QCinema International Film Festival runs November 13 to 22, 2026, in Quezon City. The five QCShorts grantee films have their world premieres during the festival.
The grantees: Carla Pulido Ocampo (Agsangit Laeng ti Al-alia), Maki Makilan (Body Works), Toni Cañete (Maanaa Kanimo), Rodiell Veloso (Run Shirley Run!) and Clister Santos (Sana’y Nandito Ka). Each receives ₱700,000.
Worth knowing: The grant announcement did not include screening dates for the five shorts. Check qcinema.ph for the full lineup, schedule and ticket details.