​

About the Filmmaker

John Peter Chua 蔡天祥 is a Chinese Filipino filmmaker and writer whose work blends fiction and personal history to tell intimate stories from within the Chinese Filipino community. His short films have screened at regional festivals such as Gawad Alternatibo, BINISAYA, and SeaShorts, and his screenplay Fishing the Moon Out of Water 水中撈月過中秋—a spiritual sequel to No More Crying 毋通閣吼咯—won the Grand Prize at the 2024 Young Creatives Challenge. He is also the author of Tracing My Grandparents’ Pen 影寫著祖父祖母的文墨, a collection of translated writings and reflections on his grandparents’ literary work, selected for the 2023/2024 BEBESEA x New Naratif Story Fellowship.

​

​

Synopsis

Stephen, 21, returns to his family's ancestral home in the Philippines to create his late grandmother’s funeral portrait. Distant and reluctant, he combs through old photo albums for a usable image—only to realize he’s missing from the family’s documented memories. His Aunt Ellen, rushing to prepare for the wake, pushes him to finish, but their exchanges grow tense as unspoken frustrations rise to the surface. As the hours pass, the house yields traces of the grandmother they both remember differently, and the emotional distance between them begins to narrow. What begins as a search for a portrait becomes a confrontation with absence, guilt, and the fragile ways we hold on to family.