When cries of resistance seep through the cracks

A look at the 2025 QCShorts International Program 2

- By Bronté H. Lacsamana Reporter

THE QCINEMA International Film Festival’s shorts program this year has expanded to a whopping 26 films, spread out across five sections. In QCShorts International 2, five filmmakers turn their attention to the realities that ignite pockets of resistance — within communities, families, and entire societies.

This specific program, titled “The Center Cannot Hold,” takes its name from Elyn Saks’ 2007 memoir on a tumultuous psychological journey, which in turn is named after a line from William Butler Yeats’ apocalyptic poem “The Second Coming.” Such is the lineage of losing grip on a centered reality, tuning into the voices of people that seek to fight back in the most unlikely of ways.

Besides offering glimpses into unexplored countrysides in Southeast Asia, these five films make up a fragmented yet interconnected — but admittedly overwhelming — experience.

The experience begins with an invitation to listen. The setting is a landscape so dreamlike, with the wind ruffling the leaves in the trees, blowing through stalks of grass on the mountainous terrain. Forceful human voices, a storm of horses galloping in, a man’s nails tracing the rough grit on an old wall — images and sounds interrogate the ties that bind humans with the earth.