Five Philippine films you can play in the US and Canada

Filipiñana is the film the Philippines sent to the Oscars. Isabel is 17, from the rural north, and new at a country club outside Manila, where she sets the ball for the man swinging. Jorrybell Agoto plays her, in Rafael Manuel's first feature. The 2020 short tells the same story.

The Film Academy of the Philippines chose it on Sept. 13. The country has been submitting in this category since 1956, and it has never been nominated. The Academy's shortlist of 15 is due Dec. 15. In the US, Kino Lorber put the feature on Apple TV on Oct. 27. A rental is $5.99, and buying it is $12.99. On Oct. 30, the five films below were already up in the US and in Canada.

1. Manila in the Claws of Light

Lino Brocka made this in 1975, after the commercial melodramas he called soaps. Julio Madiaga, played by Rafael Roco Jr., is a fisherman who comes to the capital looking for Ligaya Paraiso, played by Hilda Koronel. She was sent there with a promise of work. He takes a construction job, and the film stays in the city. It runs 125 minutes, in Tagalog. The Criterion Channel has the 2013 restoration, in the US and Canada. The country club in Filipiñana is outside this city.

2. Magellan

Lav Diaz's Magellan was the submission last year. Gael García Bernal plays Ferdinand Magellan. The film premiered in the Cannes Première section on May 18, 2025. Diaz, who won the Venice Golden Lion for The Woman Who Left, follows the explorer's last months through to his death in the Philippines in 1521. At Cannes, Diaz said this Magellan is no hero. Criterion lists the film at 163 minutes, in Portuguese, Spanish, and Cebuano.

It missed the international-feature shortlist in December 2025. On Oct. 30 it was on the Criterion Channel in both countries, with Brocka's film. The Channel changes what it carries.

3. Heneral Luna

Jerrold Tarog's 2015 film is included with Prime Video in the US and in Canada. John Arcilla plays Antonio Luna during the Philippine-American War. The enemy the film keeps returning to is his own side. It runs 1 hour 58 minutes.

Tarog later made Quezon, with Jericho Rosales as the Commonwealth president. Quezon was one of the other seven films in front of the Film Academy when it chose Filipiñana.

4. Leonor Will Never Die

Martika Ramirez Escobar's first feature stars Sheila Francisco as Leonor, a retired screenwriter. A television falls on her head, and she enters the unfinished action script she had been writing. The hero is named Ronwaldo, which is also the name of her dead son. Sundance gave the film the World Cinema Dramatic Special Jury Award for Innovative Spirit in 2022. It runs 99 minutes.

Tubi has it free with ads in the US and in Canada.

5. Hello, Love, Again

Kathryn Bernardo plays Joy, and Alden Richards plays Ethan, overseas Filipino workers who meet again in Canada five years after Hong Kong. Cathy Garcia-Sampana directed. Netflix has the film in the US and in Canada. It runs 2 hours 2 minutes.

The 2019 film, Hello, Love, Goodbye, is the Hong Kong chapter. In the US, that one is a rental. Netflix has the sequel.