Autumn Markets Part Three: Philippines Updates & Doha Film Ambitions
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.
