8 Hidden Gems Definitely Worth Their P200 Ticket Price at QCinema 2026

(SPOT.ph) QCinema is upon us again, and you might be daunted by all the titles in the lineup. As one of the programmers of the festival, I’ve got some personal recommendations for anyone looking to find some gems that might not be getting as much attention as the blockbuster titles on offer this year.

One might get the impression that the main competition section of QCinema, Asian Next Wave, is mainly made up of esoteric art films. And while there are certainly quiet, obscure, and at times mysterious films in this competition, there’s also room for a raucous, crowd-pleasing family drama like Fujiko. It’s a punk rock-laced, female-driven movie about a woman who won’t let anything get in the way of her being a mother to her child. The title character forges her own path through Japanese society, defying convention and choosing to live a life of personal agency. As a bonus, lead actress Yuki Katayama will be present at the festival.

Perhaps the strangest film in the lineup this year. It's a horror movie that spins off from the real accounts of Father Pellegrino Ernetti, a Benedictine priest who claimed decades ago to have invented a means of viewing events from the past. Chronovisor takes off from that, following a university professor who becomes obsessed with the device and does some deep research into it. This is a movie where the audience ends up reading along with the main character, keeping up with the research as things get stranger, leading into the elements of strange fiction and cosmic horror.

Fans of What We Do in the Shadows might be served well by this French vampire mockumentary. The film centers on an aspiring pop star who has a weird encounter and ends up becoming a vampire. Rather than seeing it as an impediment to her rise, she finds that being a bloodsucking monster might actually be a plus in the music industry. Director Nicky Murphy will be at the festival.

Tickets for QCinema are already just 200 pesos, and that’s a pretty good deal. But if you’re looking for the most bang for your buck, you can’t do better than this metanarrative double feature. 11 by Bebe Go was made during the pandemic and stars Gabby Padilla as a filmmaker who can’t make films because of lockdown, and travels to La Union to meet up with a friend. You Are the Film from Japanese playwright Makoto Ueda is about two people realizing that they’re watching movies about each other. Two movies for the price of one. 

This year’s edition of the festival has a lot of animation. The opening film is the world premiere of the animated adaptation of Ella Arcangel, and in the Rediscovery section, Satoshi Kon’s seminal work Perfect Blue is available for viewing. In the New Horizons section, where debut films are given the spotlight, is the anime film We Are Aliens, directed by Kohei Kadowaki. The movie is about two kids who become friends and drift apart because of an incident. We follow them into adulthood, where one of them has held on to the resentment of being cast aside. The animation is very distinct, leaning on the grotesque, really capturing the casual cruelty of some of the characters as it looks into the consequences of said cruelty.

Screen International is always the most popular section of the festival, and there are plenty of big festival winners to see here. My personal recommendation, though, is Romanian filmmaker Radu Jude’s Diary of a Chambermaid, a rather acute adaptation of the French picaresque novel of the same name. It follows a Romanian woman who works for an affluent French family, and spends some of her free time rehearsing for a theatrical adaptation of said novel. Radu Jude can be polarizing, but here he shows remarkable restraint as he examines an international economy that sees people leaving their own families and their homelands to become caretakers of other people’s families in a land that is not their own. It’s relatable content.

If you’re into documentaries, there’s a lot to dig into in the Dokyu Days section. Union Town has Barbara Kopple tackling labor in America yet again, Bombal Bernal takes on bomba films with Khavn’s usual sense of irreverence, and the Philippine premiere of You Can See Everything will have people talking for quite a while. But don’t sleep on Elisa Goméz Alvarez’s To The Moon and Back, which tracks two girls, one from Cebu and the other from Morocco, who take part in a European space camp, both hoping to someday be astronauts. The two girls make for great subjects, and the film brings some real insight into what it means to be young and to have lofty dreams in a world that often seems so hopeless.

QCShorts International has really grown to be one of the most popular sections of the festival, with the QCShorts grantees in particular drawing some of the most enthusiastic crowds. But the section curates some of the best and most interesting shorts from all around Asia, and there’s just a lot to see. But I’d just like to highlight Apa Agbayani’s Is This Desire?, a quasi-horror short that involves ghosts and being horny. It’s a lot of fun.

The 14th QCinema International Film Festival takes place November 13-22, with screenings in Gateway Cineplex. Trinoma, Robinsons Galleria, Fisher Mall, and SM Fairview, as well as special engagements at QC Memorial Circle and QC MICE. Check the Interactive Schedule, and follow QCinema on X, Facebook, and Instagram for updates.