Southeast Asia

Autumn Markets Part Three: Philippines Updates & Doha Film Ambitions

Liz Shackleton

03 Dec 2025 — 6 min read

Suzannah Mirghani's 'Cotton Queen' won the Audience Award at Doha Film Festival

There’s been a flood of news out of the second half of the autumn festival circuit from events including the Philippines’ QCinema, India’s Film Bazaar, Indonesia’s JAFF Market, Cairo Film Connection and the first Doha Film Festival.

Among these, I only attended QCinema and JAFF Market, but have been following Doha closely, so have summarised recent events in the Philippines and Qatar below, while I’ll write about Indonesia in the next newsletter after digesting Cinepoint’s 55-page market report. See the links round-up below for trade news from the other events.

QCinema Feeds Cinephiles While Filipino Films Set For Early 2026 Fests

Held at Gateway Cineplex in the Araneta City complex of Quezon City, QCinema International Film Festival is a well attended event and, judging from social media, one of the few opportunities for enthusiastic local cinephiles to see films from the recent festival circuit on the big screen. It also has a strong programme of short films from Southeast Asia, which this year included Filipino award-winners Agapito and Honey, My Love, So Sweet (I was on the Asian Next Wave jury, therefore not able to write about the festival, so big thanks to Jason Tan Liwag for providing coverage on the ground – see here for more details of the line-up and award winners).

Quezon City, one of 16 cities in the Metro Manila area, is home to around two thirds of the Philippines’ film and TV companies, so local industry participation in the festival and accompanying QCinema Industry is high. It has also recently been designated as a UNESCO Creative City of Film. QCinema’s industry platform is only a few years old but appears to be drawing a growing number of local and international guests to its projects market, seminars and Dokyu Day documentary forum.

The Philippines market may not be popping like Vietnam and Indonesia, but there was a bright spot for non-mainstream films this summer when Antoinette Jadaone’s Sunshine grossed around $1m at the local box office, a strong result for what is considered a specialist film. TBA Studios’ highly-anticipated biopic Quezon, directed by Jerrold Tarog and starring Jericho Rosales and Iain Glen, was released in late October, around the same time as VMX’s CineSilip Film Festival for erotic films, prompting Joey Reyes, chairman of the Film Development Council of the Philippines, to bemoan the fact that more people were going to see the latter. However, Quezon will receive it European premiere at the upcoming International Film Festival Rotterdam in the Limelight section.

Streamlined has heard that at least two other Filipino films will premiere at major festivals in early 2026, so there is much to look forward to from this territory, despite the box office blues at home. So far this year, there hasn’t been any major hits among mainstream films, but the Philippines’ biggest box office season takes place at the end of the year, when Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF) will debut eight new titles over the Christmas holidays.

This year’s MMFF line-up includes Call Me Mother, the second pairing of director Jun Robles Lana and star Vice Ganda; MQuest Ventures’ crime thriller Manila’s Finest, directed by Raymond Red; Jade Casto’s Rekonek for Reality MM Studios; and Regal Entertainment’s reboot of a long-running horror anthology franchise, Shake, Rattle & Roll: Evil Origins. More on all this in the updated Streamlined Guide to the Philippines coming soon.

**'Quezon' set for European premiere at IFFR**

First Doha Fest Underscores Qatar’s Ambition To Become Content Hub

Qatar launched a new film festival this year, Doha Film Festival (November 20-28), although it’s not the first time the small, oil-rich state has held such an event as the Doha Tribeca Film Festival ran 2009-2012 and was followed by the youth-focused Ajyal Film Festival. However, the new festival heralds a big step up in scale for Qatar’s regional film ambitions which are being realised through the Doha Film Institute (DFI), Media City Qatar and its newly-launched Qatar Film Committee.

The Film Committee made several announcements during the festival’s three-day Industry Days event, including the launch of a 50% film incentive and a slew of partnerships with international companies including Neon, Sony, post-production player Company 3, Department M and Miramax (the latter being jointly owned by Qatar’s beIN Media Group and Paramount Global). All are setting up regional operations in Doha and pledging to co-finance or otherwise support Arab cinema, whilst also forging links with the Global South (see links roundup below for more details on these deals).

Qatar Film Committee also announced that Barbara Broccoli’s former Bond producer Eon Productions will shoot a film adaptation of Shakespeare’s Othello in Doha in autumn 2026. David Oyelowo will direct, produce and star in the film, which transports the play to a contemporary war-torn desert in the Middle East, and will also star Rachel Brosnahan and Cynthia Erivo. It will of course apply for the Qatar incentive.

The Qatar Screen Production Incentive (QSPI) will offer a cash rebate of up to 50% on qualifying spend, combining a 40% base rate with a 10% uplift for productions that hire Qatari talent, invest in local training or promote Qatari culture. It’s not wholly location based as it enables productions to partly shoot in neighbouring Arab countries while remaining eligible under the programme.

The messaging during the festival was very much about “building a sustainable production ecosystem in the MENA region, connected to the Global South”, but has so far been vague on how these deals with Hollywood companies will benefit Global South content industries. DFI funds Arab cinema from development to post-production, and supports Asian and Sub-Saharan African projects with post-production funding. But Qatar is now scaling up its ambitions in a bid to become a major content hub in the region, along with Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates (UAE). Streamlined looks forward to learning more.

As for the festival, it handed out $300,000 in awards across its four competition sections. Guillermo Galoe’s French-Spanish co-production Sleepless City was awarded best narrative film and Sudanese filmmaker Suzannah Mirghani’s Cotton Queen, one of several Sudanese works that screened at the festival, took the Audience Award (see here for full list of award winners).

**David Oyelowo will direct and star in an adaptation of Othello to shoot in Doha**

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IN THE TRADES:

Autumn Markets Part Three: Philippines Updates & Doha Film Ambitions

Liz Shackleton

QCinema Feeds Cinephiles While Filipino Films Set For Early 2026 Fests

First Doha Fest Underscores Qatar’s Ambition To Become Content Hub

IN THE TRADES:

QATAR FUNDING:

AWARDS SEASON:

LAB & FUNDING NEWS:

PRODUCTION NEWS [FILM BAZAAR]:

PRODUCTION NEWS [OTHER]:

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