RAGING
2025, 87 minutes, The Philippines, Color, 5.1 Sound, in Filipino, Romblomanon with English subtitles
Sales/Festivals: Diversion
Synopsis:
The lush but troubled landscape of mid-1990s Sibuyan Island in the Philippines. Eli is a reserved young man carrying the weight of a trauma that his community refuses to acknowledge. After surviving a sexual assault by a peer, an event dismissed by local authorities and friends as nothing more than rough play, he retreats into a world of silence and isolation. When he witnesses a mysterious plane crash in the island’s densely forested mountains, his attempt to alert others is met with the same incredulity that greeted his earlier disclosure. In his solitude, Eli clings to fragments of sound and memory – often via the cassette tapes he carries with him – as he searches for some means of expression and truth. As the film unfolds, the personal and the communal collide: Eli’s internal unravelling mirrors the larger spectre of the environmental exploitation that is threatening his hometown. What begins as a quiet examination of one individual’s anguish evolves into a parable about how silence and denial can corrode both human lives and the natural world that sustains them.
Director's Statement
On September 25, 2017, a private plane reportedly crashed and sank into the sea off Romblon, Philippines. Despite a search operation, no wreckage was found, but three local witnesses stood by their accounts. This incident inspired “Raging,” a film about a young man who was sexually abused, coming to terms with his trauma while investigating a mysterious plane crash. As a native of Romblon, I hear the deafening silence surrounding male abuse. In my community, this topic is rarely discussed, yet I find that it is a common experience among many young gay men who have faced sexual abuse. I, too, was a victim, but I didn’t understand the impact until much later. As part of the community, this issue along with illegal mining are urgent for me to tackle. Eli’s story reverberates the trauma and isolation that male survivors often face, especially in societies like ours where one’s experiences are dismissed or stigmatized. At the same time, parallel to Eli’s personal battle is a larger environmental narrative that threatens our community and ecosystem. Just like “Huling Palabas,” “Raging” is also a love letter to my homeland but this time, more than about the protection and preservation of our culture and environment, this film is a call for justice for the abused spaces – the one we live in and the one we are in.
About the Director:
Born in Romblon, an island province of the Philippines, Ryan Machado is a playwright, director and lecturer at the University of the Philippines Manila. He has long been interested in stories from the peripheries of the Philippines. His work foregrounds regional voices, queering, masculinity and silence amid social and environmental neglect. His debut feature film Huling Palabas (Fin) premiered at Cinemalaya, where it won the prize for Best Director, and went on to screen in the Berlinale Generation section and at major LGBTQ+ festivals around the world. In 2025, he founded the Talabukon Film Festival to advance regional cinema in Romblon.
