Description: One of the most prolific and acclaimed directors of the Philippine New Wave, Brillante Mendoza has created another virtuoso exploration of the volatile Manila slums. The camerawork in this verité portrait of petty thieves and hustlers is fluid, sweeping, and seemingly untethered, as frantic as the overcrowded shacks and ditches it captures. Mendoza uses this hybrid fiction essay not to judge the questionable acts of his fringe-dwelling characters, but to subtly implicate political and religious institutions as a source of their problems. (Ignatius Films)