A Brief Encounter

Directed by Liryc Dela Cruz

With Kathleen Magpanta, Jenny Llanto Caringal and Benjamin Vasquez Barcellano Jr.

Kath, an Italian-Filipino woman, works remotely as a digital content moderator in Genoa. When she learns that a colleague in the Philippines has taken his own life—crushed by the very job that fills her own days (the endless cataloging of beheadings, torture, live-streamed suicides, and child abuse)—she initially takes two days off, then extends her break, no longer convinced she can bring herself to return to her terminal. A massage appointment introduces her to Jenny, a Filipino woman who tends to people's bodies as a side job. That scheduled hour evolves into something more—an encounter neither woman expected. Each carrying her own burdens and losses, they finally find a way, together, to stop being invisible. The screen, once capable only of wounding them, now reflects a new image: a redemptive possibility for healing.