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Exclusive: Following its work on premium series The Bagman, Philippines production outfit Rein Entertainment is launching a slate of films and series here at Busan’s Asian Contents and Film Market (Acfm) headed by crime drama series Drug War: A Conspiracy Of Silence and Lino Cayetano’s ‘Neo-Western’ movie Salvageland.

Drug War: A Conspiracy Of Silence, directed by Shugo Praico, follows a sharp-minded priest from a privileged background who works with a conscience-stricken policewoman to uncover the circumstances behind the death of his missing protégé.

Currently in production, the 6 x 60-minute series stars Ian Veneracion, who won best actor at the 2022 Metro Manila Film Festival for Rein Entertainment’s A Silent Night (Nanahimik Ang Gabi), also directed by Praico.

Salvageland stars Richard Gomez and Elijah Canlas in the story of an idealistic police officer and his father, a cynical veteran of the force. Father and son are forced to confront...

Supposedly inspired by the news of the kidnapping of a famous journalist by the Abu Sayyaf, Sigfried Barros-Sanchez's Tsardyer (Charger) tells the story of Shihab (Martin delos Santos), a young boy who is recruited into the group to run back and forth from the kidnappers' den to the nearest house to charge the cellular phones used by the kidnappers to communicate their demands for the release of their captives. Barros-Sanchez, unsatisfied with the already promising premise of the boy who gets caught right in the middle of the war, needlessly expands his reach, tackling without benefit of any clear direction everything from corruption within the military and the role of media in the troubles in Mindanao. The film, already hurt by an ambition that is supported mainly by convoluted storylines that only reveal empty aspirations of social relevance, is rendered further unwatchable by stale and tasteless filmmaking.

 

The film's cast,...