Amazing things are happening with the digital age. One of them is the booming independent film scene in Southeast Asia, which has become a restoration tool and refuge for their many national cinemas. Filipino independent filmmaker Lav Diaz puts it simply: “Digital Age freed cinema. The medium is now owned by filmmakers”.

To own this new medium of digital filmmaking is no easy feat and to innovate the medium and bring storytelling to new heights is what the new Philippine cinema and its filmmakers have managed to do. With its century-old film history and its independent filmmakers from the 1950s to the present, the Philippines has and still is taking the lead in Southeast Asian filmmaking, always speaking a new language and communicating a new vision.

And it is for this reason that Asian Hot Shots Berlin has chosen the Philippines as its first country focus.