UnTrue

Mara leaves her hometown in the Philippines for greener pastures in the country of Georgia. She finds work as a waitress in a restaurant where she meets a fellow Filipino migrant worker named Joachim. They soon strike a friendship, despite Joachim’s mysterious nature. Their connection grows and they develop feelings for one another, until something strange begins to happen with Joachim. Claiming to hear peculiar sounds and see visions of a strange woman, Joachim soon shows his violent tendencies. Although she begins to fear him, Mara is even more scared of being all alone in a foreign land, and decides to stay with Joachim. From Joachim’s point of view, however, it seems like Mara is the one going insane with strange visions. Is someone being Untrue? Or is something more malevolent going on? Filmmaker Sigrid Andrea Bernardo displaces the tropical gothic and gives it the more muted tones of European psychological horror in this story of migrants in Europe. (Hawaii International Film Festival)