Synopsis

A nameless filmmaker walks the streets of Tayug, Philippines in search of an obscured part of the town’s history—a failed agrarian insurgency against imperialism in 1931 by folk hero Pedro Calosa. The film shuttles between this and two distinct timelines: one set in 1930s, tracing the origins of the revolution; the other in the 1960s, featuring an elderly Calosa recounting his past to a pair of eager journalists.

Originally intended as a play in 2001, Ashes and Ghosts marks Christopher Gozum’s return after a six-year filmmaking hiatus. His approach to history is distinct and hybridised, eschewing the epic for the personal and the lyrical. The consistency of the film’s black-and-white cinematography and sensitive editing allows for a sense of fluidity across space and time—constructs that are subverted and transcended by the story’s mystical underpinnings.

Movie Trailer