Voices · 6 of 7
New Voices in Media
Credits roll fast, and the Filipino names in them are easy to miss, so we’re slowing them down. Meet the Philippines-based and Filipino American photographers, directors, and cinematographers whose work stopped us this year, from a Portland photographer working on film to a Las Piñas director who began as a colorist, and we’ve picked the film or photo series to see first from each.
Portraits, documentary work, and fashion stories, from film portraits made in Portland to magazine shoots for Vogue Philippines.
Featured in Photography
Celeste Noche
Portland, Oregon
In her photo series Overland, Overseas, three women pose in Portland in a nod to the classical paintings of Fernando Amorsolo, photographed on Kodak Portra 400 and 800. The series begins with a number, the estimated 15 million Filipinos living outside the archipelago, and asks how anyone keeps an ancestral legacy going far from the land and the seas it came from.
Celeste Noche, a Portland-based Filipino American photographer, was photographer, creative director, and producer on the series, with styling and wardrobe by Rodellee Bas of Atèlette. Overland, Overseas was named among the American Photography 42 winners.
Start with Overland, Overseas.
See the seriescelestenoche.com
How we know her work: Celeste photographed DIWA’s Prologue, our founder, Kyle Beltran, assisted on this series, and one of its models, Jane Barmore, produces DIWA events with us.
Featured in Photography
Karl King Aguña
Philippines
For the December 2025/January 2026 issue of Vogue Philippines, Karl King Aguña photographed “A Journey to Basilan,” a fashion story made on the island with styling by Renée De Guzman and research consultants Marian Pastor Roces, Iñigo Roberto P. Roces, and Maria Fe Quiroga.
The story puts Filipino designers, including Rajo Laurel, Uzair Shoid, Jaggy Glarino, and Dennis Lustico, on the same pages as Comme des Garçons and Dries Van Noten, the kind of pairing DIWA makes in its own editorials. In March 2026, Aguña also photographed Vogue Faces, a portrait series of 31 Filipino models.
Start with “A Journey to Basilan” in Vogue Philippines.
Also in Photography
- Lawrence SumulongBrooklyn, New YorkA Filipino American photographer on staff at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, and an American Photography 42 winner. Start with the series Manila Gothic at lawrencesumulong.com.
- Gab MejiaPhilippinesWhite Water, a series on memory, colonial mapping, and rising seas in the Philippines, was selected for FOTO Bali Festival 2026, where Mejia was the only Filipino among 36 creatives.
- Kim MontesManilaA fashion photographer profiled in MEGA’s March 2026 Women Behind the Lens feature, which singles out an eye for texture and beadwork.
Shorts and first features that won over festival juries this year, from Cinemalaya in Manila to Busan.
Featured in Directors
Gabriela Serrano
Las Piñas City, Philippines
Gabriela Serrano came to directing by way of the edit suite. She started in post-production as a colorist, worked as an editor on FX’s The Choe Show, and has since moved into directing.
Her 2026 short Elenita Elena Elaine, starring Agot Isidro, Gabby Padilla, and Mariana Serrano, follows a mother and daughter through dreams, ambition, and everything left unsaid between them, and it won Best Director in the short film category at Cinemalaya 22 in August. Her earlier short Surface Tension won Best Short at QCShorts Lokal during QCinema 2025, and her first feature, Please Bear With Me, has already won pitch awards from BIFAN, Festival du nouveau cinéma Montréal, and the Southeast Asian Film Lab.
Start with Dikit, her 16-minute 2021 short on the Criterion Channel.
Also in Directors
- Vahn Leinard PascualPhilippinesHis feature debut, Status: Rejected, follows a grandmother whose visa applications keep getting denied, and it won the NETPAC Award at Cinemalaya 22.
- Arvin BelarminoPhilippinesHis debut feature, Ria, about a folk-punk musician facing eviction, won the Heart of Eurasia Award at the 31st Busan International Film Festival in October.
- Apa AgbayaniNew YorkA director who began in music videos, received a NewFest New Voices Filmmaker Grant in 2024, and screened the 17-minute short Is this desire? at the Columbia University Film Festival in May.
- Rafael BitangaUnited StatesThe 24-minute documentary Bridging Our Stories follows Alma Manabat Parker, who coaches the Ketchikan High School Dance Team in Alaska, on a trip to the Philippines to learn traditional dances.
The people deciding where the light falls and what the frame leaves out.
Featured in Cinematography
Carlo Canlas Mendoza
Los Angeles, California
Carlo Canlas Mendoza’s thesis film at the American Film Institute, The Chef, won silver at the 2019 Student Academy Awards. He finished his MFA in cinematography there in 2018 as the recipient of the Rachel Morrison scholarship, after time at the 2007 Asian Film Academy and the 2011 Berlinale Talent Campus.
From Los Angeles, the Filipino cinematographer has photographed more than a dozen features that have screened at festivals in Venice, Berlin, New York, Tokyo, Busan, and Karlovy Vary.
Start with The Chef, which streams free on Sloan Science & Film.
Also in Cinematography
- Angelica JacintoNew YorkA director of photography who shot the 2025 miniseries Forked and the 2025 feature And Through the Portal We Go. See her reel at ajacinto.com.
The costume designers and stylists dressing the people in front of the camera.
Featured in Styling
Carla Villanueva
“I had to do 300 costumes,” Carla Villanueva told Vogue Philippines about Filipiñana, the film DIWA screened at The Hoxton, Portland, this October. She borrowed from friends and brands, and ordered the larger uniform runs from local seamstresses and Toqa.
The film is set on a golf course, so the looks run from pointed salakots for the caddies to the mint-green uniforms of the tee girls, and the security guards’ uniforms drew on Marcos-era secret police. For the film’s Berlinale red carpet, Villanueva worked as both stylist and costume designer.
Start with the tee girl uniforms in Filipiñana.
Also in Styling
- Brittany HamptonLos AngelesA stylist who dresses WNBA players, and the granddaughter of a Pampanga-born designer who founded FAYE in San Francisco and made barongs and Filipinianas.
More Filipino film from DIWA
Stay for the credits
We add new photographers, directors, and cinematographers to this page every quarter. Join The Loom, DIWA’s free newsletter, with the form just below, and you’ll meet them when we do.
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