The best Bart Guingona’s drama movies

What if you met the woman you wanted to make your wife after you married someone else? Ian Montes is a picture of success. Despite being a son of a shipping tycoon, Ian refused to just ride in his father's empire. He built his own real estate company and earned his first million at a very young age. He never looked back since then. Driven by his ambition to become better, if not as good as his father, Ian managed to make it on his own. But behind all the glory is a man yearning for love and recognition.

Andrés Bonifacio y de Castro is considered to be one of the most influential proponents in the struggle against Spanish colonial rule in the Philippines during the late nineteenth century. Today, he is still celebrated as the father of the Philippine Revolution.

A 30-year old man who returns home to Manila is forced to confront his old life, his old friends, and his ex-boyfriend at their high school reunion where the drama of the past and the present collide.

Amidst the vast sugar plantations of Negros in Southern Philippines, a matriarch lies in the throes of death. Her children rush home to confront the crisis as news of the impending death of their well-loved mother spreads among the community. There, in their ancestral house, the siblings are forced to deal with the issues of inheritance, tradition and the family legacy. It is a familiar tale. After all, every family has its story. And to each one, its own deserved secrets.

To this day, Ishmael Bernal's movie Himala is still in our town, in our world. This will be reflected in the broader perspective of the majority, of the surrounding events. Beliefs still lie in the truth. Consciousness is still dominant at the level of illusion. The naive, savage, cruel, and selfish politics still prevail.

A wandering peddler separates from his fellow salesman and becomes involved with criminals in the jungle.

Powerful but ill-stricken business woman, Vilma Santos navigates her complicated relationship with her caregiver, Angel Locsin and her estranged son, Xian Lim in this story about acceptance, love and forgiveness.

Taking leave from their jobs at a gold mine, three workers journey to their home village on foot through the spectacular yet unforgiving wilderness of the mythical island of Hugaw. As time passes and their conversations intensify, buried histories emerge and a sense of psychosis invades the scene. As ever, Lav Diaz’s exquisitely subdued black-and-white images and patient rhythm lend a Brechtian register to the drama; almost always filmed from the same fixed distance, each scene is an immaculate tableau vivant. Behind the film’s folkloric façade, Diaz once again taps into the collective memory of defiant struggles against the tyranny of both contemporary Filipino society and colonial brutality, centred on the timeless image of men walking – one of the key traits of Pan.

100 chronicles the last three months of a cancer stricken woman who has a list of things to do before she dies. Her list of tasks, mostly closures and practical undertakings, expands to the worldly and the spiritual as people close to her share her last days. The film examines the betrayal of the body, celebrates the senses and contemplates the end of life and how to live it.

It is the year 2034 AD and Southeast Asia has been in the dark for the last three years, literally, because the sun hasn’t shone as a result of massive volcanic eruptions at the Celebes Sea in 2031. Madmen control countries, communities, enclaves and bubble cities. Cataclysmic epidemics razed over the continent. Millions have died and millions have left.

In the late 70s, a gang of militias under the control of the military, terrorizes a remote village in the Philippines. The poet/teacher/activist, Hugo Haniway, decides to find out the truth about the disappearance of his wife. A love story set in the darkest period of Philippine history, the Marcos Dictatorship. Based on real events and real characters.

Paano Na Kaya (lit: How Will It Be?, but more precisely, "How then?") is a 2010 romantic drama, Filipino film starring Kim Chiu and Gerald Anderson and produced and released by Star Cinema.

An artist struggles to finish his work while a storyline about a cult plays in his head.

This is a Filipino omnibus film about three different journeys.