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I can proudly say that I am one of the animators that worked on this film!!

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E.T. Mapukpukaw

Review by Philbert Dy ★★★★★ Liked

I feel like I've used the word 'miracle' a lot when describing Carl Papa's films. I use it a lot in the context of Filipino cinema anyway, where resources for filmmakers are scarce, and it sometimes feels like movies are good in spite of everything. But Papa, who insists on making animated films on shoestring budgets provided by festival grants, has consistently made films that just make me feel like something otherworldly must have happened.

This time, he had a team of ninety animators, and it still feels magical. What struck me was how expressive the faces remained, even as features got taken away. And this is a film where it really matters, where we have to be convinced of…

Review by kobe 🎄 ★★★★

you know what’s scarier than ghosts? memories. the painful ones. a never-ending narrative forever carved in your mind. it morphs. it follows. haunting. traumatizing. alien-shapeshifting. until we distance ourselves now that it’s become more and more foreign to understand; but we try to make sense of it, at least in ways we know how. 

Iti Mapukpukaw weaves courageous vignettes of reclaiming your own voice and the struggles we encounter in between. that sometimes, all we just need is someone who patiently understands our worldview, someone who’s willing to lend their shoulders—albeit in that small, cozy space under our bed.

*happy halloween! 🎃
**cinema 76 with gennie

Review by magyes ★★★★★ Liked

This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

Review by al pacino ★★★★½ Liked

wow this movie was so nuanced, sensitive and gentle in telling a very important story. it felt like a companion for people who are trying to regain what was taken away from them. so powerful & meaningful. i hope the voices of all those who were silenced will be heard again. such a beautiful film.

3

Warning: Spoiler(s) ahead!

Fugues and psychogenic blackouts suddenly appear like blanks in the life of our protagonist, following the death of someone who's been crucial to a life-changing point in his childhood. All it took was a quick visit to his uncle's before the floodgates that have helped contain the spaceships and alien invasions flung wide open and the next few episodes of his adult life became a cloze test whereof we likewise become forced to accompany him as he recapture the missing pieces of his old self and face the monster he's finally ready to take down this time around.

P.S.
The 4/5 rating will best be explained by the review I wrote on G. Araki's 'Mysterious Skin' which can be accessed here .

Review by DANI ★★★★

Ang Mga Pakinabang ng Pagiging Isang Wallflower

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I must ashamedly confess that as a selection committee member, I pushed against giving Iti Mapukpukaw the grant. My reasons being 

1. It felt too much like Mysterious Skin 
2. I didn’t think Carl Papa would pull an animated film off in less than two years 

Happy to it I was wrong on both s. Unlike Mysterious Skin, Iti is quiet and sensitive, relying on the strength of only three earnest characters to take you through harrowing trauma. It also uses animation to an impressive degree, symbolizing incompleteness with the checkered photoshop layer and using the surreal quality of the medium to prevent you from questioning Eric’s reality. 

It’s great and touching and expertly crafted. And Dolly, as always, is THE BEST.

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I'll get right into it. And I'm sorry, I know this is an unpopular opinion but it needs to be said:

This was such harmful messaging. It was resilience porn for a delicate subject matter that, in reality, would take a lot of time and effort — read: no magical cure! no instant happy ending! — for someone to even begin to heal from.

My reception of this might be different (better) had there been more focus on the healing process. Like if our protagonist came back to reality sooner rather than sticking with the fantasy for most of the film and, in turn, making a spectacle of the trauma.

There needed to be a balance between the escapist fantasies…

Review by AIois ★★

Wow, a film about arrested development due to sexual trauma, involving imagined aliens. What a mysterious concept.

Positives first: Cool mix of rotoscoping and traditional animation. The multiple switches in animation styles as plot device were inspired. There's a tender love story in here as well.

Now to my lukewarm take... At best, portraying sexual trauma as some mythic monster that we have to keep at arm's length all our lives until we reach critical mass and finally kill it by *checks notes* acknowledging it, so only then we can start the healing process, is woefully tired. Come on. At worst, it's regressive, anti-corrective, and only further enforces culture of silence. It's easier said than done, but we should be aiming for a punitive culture that protects our kids better NOW so they won't have to resort to self-therapizing in adulthood. Maybe then, they won't have to "feel seen" by well-meaninged but ultimately outdated media like this.

Review by Dea ★★★★★ Liked

sana mamatay na lahat ng mga alien, pakyu kayong lahat 🖕🖕🖕