Middle class school girl Bona (Nora Aunor) skips class to hang around the sets of bit actor Gardo (Philip Salvador). When her father attempts to beat some sense into her, Bona moves into Gardo’s shack in the slums, delighted to play house–only to find herself not the wife, but the maid.

The Philippines, 1974: as Marcos’ oppressive regime becomes increasingly entrenched after he imposed martial law in 1972, Servando Monzon III, heir to his powerful clan’s hacienda and family business, refuses to capitulate to the dictator’s plans to control the country. In this adaptation of Ricardo Lee’s short story and screenplay Servando Magdamag, Lav Diaz, the unrelenting and incisive prober of Philippine history’s shadowy areas, offers a film of epic proportions. The aim, as unequivocally indicated by the title, is nothing less than to scrutinise Filipino violence and explore its roots from Spanish colonisation to the present day. Feudalism and power struggles are closely examined. Borne aloft by a remarkable cast – John Lloyd Cruz in the main role is a huge television and film star in the Philippines – this “sine novela”, according to the opening credits, mixes up the codes of the telenovela with Lav Diaz’ ostensibly very different filmmaking. The story unfolds of the mutual relationships of a profusion of characters over time, shot in the sumptuous black and white that is now the stuff of most of his movies. The filmmaker himself frames these magnificent shots that stretch out, sensuous experiences of living tableaux attentive to the bodies set in a place as well as to the languages used, to the inner movements and down-time. In this film that’s both a tragic saga set in the past and the tale of an “endless nightmare”, Diaz takes on a dual allegorical dimension – the figures of the philosopher and the blind man – and an informative one, like the revolutionary education meetings that pepper the story. This “tale of violence” is also an epic with very contemporary resonances, as the recent election to the presidency of another Marcos, a devoted son of the previous president, reminds us. (Nicolas Feodoroff)
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Intoy takes care of his parents when his sister moved out to work overseas. Since he lives in a remote area in Samar, the only way he could contact his sister is by going to strange rock formations on the island.

以菲律宾为主题的影片，代表菲律宾电影的三位导演Brillante Mendoza，Lavda Diaz和Kidla Lathatimic参与其中。菲律宾由7,641个岛屿组成，分为三个部分：北吕宋岛，南棉兰老岛和中米沙鄢群岛。

本片深入研究了人性——也许是我们动物性冲动的进化。雨果岛是菲律宾群岛中一个被上帝遗弃的岛屿，在这里只有很少的好事发生：日本占领者在二战中建立了一个强迫妓女的营地，现在矿工们为了微薄的收入在泥泞中拼搏。其中三个人于是开始寻找更好的生活。但在旅途中他们发现，人类的历史就是一部暴力的谱系。片名指的是动物世界中我们最亲密的表亲之一黑猩猩的动物学名称。