Pens ready! QCinema announces the participants of the 2025 Critics Lab

QCinema Critics Lab Participants
Top row (L–R): Athena Venus, FL Calvario, Lebron Ponce, A.L. Sarino
Bottom row (L–R): Kiana Flores, Benj Gabun, Javi Villaluz, Jia Enad

For its 13th year, the QCinema International Film Festival (QCIFF) is opening its doors for a third year in a row to six emerging critics from all over the Philippines to participate in the QCinema Critics Lab from November 13-17, 2025.

The QCinema Critics Lab is created, designed, and led by FIPRESCI member and four-time Golden Globe voter Jason Tan Liwag with the assistance of critic and former FAMAS jury member Emil Hofileña. Participants will experience a five-day intensive in-person workshop/forum where they will watch and review films, interview filmmakers, and discuss with established critics, researchers, and media professionals about the state of film criticism and filmmaking in the Philippines and Southeast Asia. Participants of the third edition of the lab will receive full press access to QCinema and are expected to release criticism in the form of short reviews, festival reports, podcasts, and video essays.

This year’s lab will focus its attention on the editor—individuals who shape images, stories, and cultural conversations through writing, education, curation, filmmaking, publishing, and more. This year’s sessions allow the emerging critics in the lab, all of whom come from a variety of backgrounds and locations, to engage in dialogue with editors in the hopes of wrestling with our larger notions of the “bad”—bad writing, bad reading, bad ideas, bad editing, bad artistry, bad artists, bad spaces, and more.

Invited guests at this year’s Critics Lab will include Laurence Marvin Castillo (associate Professor at the UP Los Banos and author of Figuring Resistance: The Revolution in Film and Literature in the Philippines), Katrina Ross Tan (professor at the UP Los Baños, festival director of Pelikultura, and author of Regional Cinema in the Philippines: The Archipelagic Imagination), Erwin Romulo (sound designer, curator, and founding editor-in-chief of Esquire Philippines), Jonty Cruz (Chief of Editorial Content of Rolling Stone Philippines), Audrey Carpio (features editor of Vogue Philippines), Jerome Gomez (editor-in-chief of SPOT PH), Chris Fujiwara (author and editor of several books on film, including Jacques Tourneur: The Cinema of Nightfall, The World and Its Double: The Life and Work of Otto Preminger, and Jerry Lewis), Panos Kotzathanasis (editor-in-chief of Asian Movie Pulse), Katrina Stuart Santiago (critic, editor, and owner of Everything’s Fine), Guelan Varela-Luarca (Palanca Hall of Fame, writer, and translator; director and writer behind the stage adaptations of Mike De Leon’s Kisapmata and Batch ’81), Alyssandra Maxine (Critics Lab alumnus, editor of MARG1N, and program officer in The Center for New Cinema), Red Sales (Critics Lab alumnus and video essayist), and Lav Diaz (former critic and director of Magellan).

This year’s participants are A.L. Sarino, Athena Venus, Benj Gabun Sumabat, FJ Calvario, Javi Villaluz, Jia Enad, Kiana Flores, and Lebron Ponce. More information about them can be found  below:

A. L. Sarino is a writer based in Taguig City. An in-house member of Erato Magazine and a general editor for Cathartic Youth Literary Magazine and The Trailblazer Literary Magazine, Sarino explores the self, community, and identity politics through poetry, film reviews, and experimental prose.

Athena Venus is an aspiring film critic from Rizal, whose love for cinema blossomed during the pandemic and evolved into a deep fascination for the dreamlike realm of Sofia Coppola, Agnès Varda, and Alice Rohrwacher films. Athena's work focuses on stories of women, and the struggles they face in contemporary society. When she's not writing about the nuances of the female experience, you'll catch her posting edits on her twitter account.

Benj Gabun Sumabat is a trilingual (Ilokano, Filipino, English) non-binary poet, essayist, and PWD from Cagayan Valley and Ifugao. A senior BA Creative Writing student at UP Diliman, their writing has appeared in NYU’s The Greene Street Review, Polyglot Magazine, Bannawag, Dagmay, TLDTD Journal, and elsewhere. An alumnus of Palihang Rogelio Sicat, Amelia Lapeña Bonifacio Writers Workshop, Cordillera Creative Writing Workshop, and Kalaw-Ledesma Art Criticism Writing Workshop, their works mainly explore and work on belonging/unbelonging, departures, queer body, disability justice, and blue humanities.

FJ Calvario writes about films sometimes. He may have graduated with a degree in Geography but he is most passionate about cinema. He writes reviews and edits videos for the collective Kinoise. A UP Cinema alumnus, he is a former Cinemaster Critics Circle chairperson and served as Selection Committee Head for Piling Obrang Vidyo XXI. Having proposed a “spatial cinema” framework for this thesis, he continues to seek opportunities to bridge geography and cinema. He can get a little political.

Javi Villaluz is a student filmmaker and writer from Novaliches, Quezon City. He first began online on Letterboxd under the alias PlaguDocta, gaining notice for writing poetry on the obscure titles of pan-Asian cinema. His work has been published in the indie magazine MARG1N, and he was most recently a fellow of Sphere Festival’s Young Critics Program. He continues to explore prose, interiority, and storytelling through the language of film editing.

Jia Enad is a homegrown Cebuana and is currently studying BA Communication at the University of the Philippines Cebu. Writing from the regions, she brings a southern lens into the capital's conversations on cinema, seeking to reframe how stories from the margins are seen and valued. Her criticism probes films through the lens of girlhood, history, and regional life, often wrestling with images until they yield questions about intimacy, violence, and collective survival.

Kiana Flores is a freelance writer and marketing strategist. Her work has been published in Rookie Magazine, CNN Philippines Life, Vogue Philippines, and PhilSTAR Life. She has worked in film production and sets as an Assistant Director. She is an aspiring critic and is based between Davao City and the Visayan regions. Her work examines the intersections of identity, culture, lifestyle, and community.

Lebron Ponce is a writer, director, and critic from Ormoc City, Leyte. A junior taking up Development Communication at Visayas State University, he is a member of Silakbo—Baybay Film Organization, the first student-led film organization in Leyte. His works and interests gravitate toward regional cinema, memory, and social realities, often exploring the intersections of community, identity, and place through humanist lenses.

As a continuing education initiative, the QCinema Critics Lab also invites back all fourteen (14) of its participants from its previous editions to participate in forums and discussions with the new cohort of critics. They are Alyssandra Maxine, Bane Vicente, Justine Danielle Reyes, Kaj Palanca, Lé Baltar, Novy Mae Recate, Red Sales, Roselle Marie Abanilla, Acer Batislaong, Brontë Lacsamana, Wax Singson, Ligaya Villablanca, Maverick Alviar, and Mac John Bautista.

The QCinema Critics Lab is a program under the 13th QCinema International Film Festival, taking place from November 12-17, 2025, and is made possible through partnerships with The Millas Hostel and Cafe, Sine Pop, Ultradogme, and Everything’s Fine.