Artwork by Ariel Esteban Cayer
One Sunday in November, Mila (Charo Santos) announces to her father Dadang (Vic Silayan), a retired police officer, that she is pregnant, asking for permission to marry her co-worker Noel (Jay Ilangan). The noose tightens as Dadong's unreasonable expectations for a dowry are not met and he exhibits an increasingly authoritarian streak. When the couple marries, Mila's father begins a game of exclusion and manipulation to reassert control over his kin.
Based on the true crime reportage "The House on Zapote Street" penned by Nick Joaquin, Mike De Leon's Kisapmata, beautifully restored in 4K by L'Immagine Ritrovata, is a stunning example of psychological horror that meticulously tightens the noose around its characters' neck until the outcome feels inevitable. A brutal, unflinching portrait of the horrors of patriarchy at its most pathological, it was voted the 3rd Best Filipino Film Of All Time by the Pinoy Rebyu, and stands as one of Mike De Leon's most unsettling and politically resonant works.