Ngilngig Asian Fantastic Film Festival

Ngilngig Asian Fantastic Film Festival is a showcase of films that explore and expand the myriad meanings of ngilngig—a common Bisaya expression for the fantastic, the ghastly, the macabre; or for something that elicits horror, goosebumps, and repulsion.

From what used to be a horror-genre festival, Ngilngig Festival has expanded its scope to become the first fantastic film festival of its kind in Southeast Asia, extending the reach to other neighboring countries’ “ngilngig” and fantastic films that are significant with our own ways of telling stories to promote and preserve our myths, traditions, history and culture into cinematic form.

VISION

“Ngilngig” may just be a concept of the mind, but since the mind, like the universe, is constantly expanding, so will the concept of “ngilngig”, and it shall continue to inspire filmmakers, artists and dreamers, to unite under the essence of “ngilngig” as an element to create and develop voices through the different ways of seeing their own experiences, dreams, and imaginations, as well as, of archiving the vanishing oral stories into cinematic and other familiar and unexplored art forms that may anticipate or reflect social developments.

HISTORY

In 2010, the first series of shorts succeeded with an attempt of forging a filmmaking movement that would make a stand for regional cinema. Thus, creating the Davao Ngilngig Films, composing of only five films that are characterized by their unifying “ngilngig” factor, and presenting varying themes such as reliving a ghost story from the past, processing an occurring memory from childhood, identifying a town tale from a province, interpreting an enigmatic mesh of dreams, and recreating an unforgettable peculiar event.

NAFFF started as Ngilngig Film Festival in 2013 as a horror-genre festival in the Davao region which aimed to highlight the diverse folklores, myths, and tales of Mindanao and the Philippine archipelago. The festival also hosted film camps mentored by award-winning Filipino filmmakers such as Sherad Anthony Sanchez and Raya Martin, among others. These film camps became a learning ground and a space for opportunities for emerging filmmakers and artists in the Davao region.

The festival’s success, viewership, as well as the support of our patrons and friends, became the foundation for what is to become the first fantastic film festival of its kind in Southeast Asia—the Ngilngig Asian Fantastic Film Festival (abbreviated as NAFFF).

THE ORGANIZERS

The festival is organized by Pasalidahay, a film collective of Mindanao film enthusiasts and filmmakers who recognize the importance of film as a platform for expression and change, who value the diversity of audiences, and the need to cultivate a filmgoing culture and develop a critical, appreciative audience.