Cebu’s ailing mountains become the heart of Sine Kabataan entry Bato’ng Bunga

Set against the landscapes of Toledo City and the Municipality of Pinamungajan, Cebu, Bato’ng Bunga, an official selection of the 9th Sine Kabataan Film Lab & Festival, follows a family caring for a father—a former miner whose body gradually turns to stone.

Writer and director Elj Seth Tababa, whose roots trace back to Lamac, Pinamungajan, employs magic realism to weave a haunting narrative about the lasting effects of mining on families and communities left behind by mining companies.

Drawing from the stories of his hometown and the experience of his own grandfather, who developed a skin condition after years of working in the mines, Tababa crafts a deeply personal and poignant reflection on labor and survival and the human cost of extraction.

“The mine does not remember his name, pero ako, naaalala ko. Siya po ang rason why I started this project in the first place,” Tababa says of his grandfather’s influence on the project.

For Tababa, Cebu’s rural landscapes as places that have long been shaped by extraction, where both the land and the people who work it are both consumed by the industry. In Bato’ng Bunga, this reality is embodied through the metaphor of turning into stone—a representation of miners’ bodies being consumed by labor, trapped within systems they cannot escape.

Through this process, the film asks the question: what happens when a body can no longer endure?

The production is led by producer Jon Owen Lepiten, who helmed the Sine Kabataan 8 Jury Prize winner Sunog Sa Sugbo. Tababa first appeared at the festival as the lead actor in Lepiten’s film. Bato’ng Bunga marks their second collaboration, this time with Tababa stepping into the director’s chair and Lepiten serving as producer.

This also marks another milestone for the University of San Carlos’ Cinema Program, under the School of Architecture, Fine Arts, and Design (SAFAD), which continues to encourage and support its students in joining film festivals such as Sine Kabataan.

As a film school in Cebu, USC Cinema provides aspiring filmmakers with opportunities to develop their craft through hands-on production, film theory and criticism, research, and participation in the wider film community. Its back-to-back presence at Sine Kabataan with last year’s Sunog sa Sugbo, also winning Best Director, Best Cinematography, reflects the program’s growing creative and filmmaking capacity, while contributing to the continuing development of Cebuano cinema.

Bato’ng Bunga will premiere at the 9th Sine Kabataan Film Lab & Festival as part of the Philippine Film Industry Month celebration this September 2026. (PR)