[OPINION] MMFF, Christmas, and the cost of pretending
Director Jun Robles Lana's Facebook post about rising Metro Manila Film Festival ticket prices landed because it said the quiet part out loud. Not the part about “supporting local cinema,” which we’ve been repeating for years, but the part about money. Real money. The kind you count before Christmas and realize is already spoken for.
For a minimum-wage worker lucky enough to actually get a 13th-month pay, taking a modest family to an MMFF screening can swallow most of that bonus. By the time the credits roll, what’s left might be barely enough to cover the basics, the same “generous” amount the government once said could feed a family for Noche Buena—an amount that food experts laughed at, consumer groups condemned, and anyone who has ever shopped in a real market sneered at. And now you’re supposed to watch a movie with it. Philippine cinema “for the people”? More like for anyone whose family budget can survive a joke.
For years, the festival coasted on habit. Filipino movies played during Christmas week, and the price of entry was low enough that people didn’t think too hard about it. You went because the kids were on vacation, because the mall was air-conditioned, and because it fit easily into the rhythm of the holidays. MMFF didn’t need defending; it fit into life without argument.
That ease is gone. Once an outing requires calculation, justification, and occasionally guilt, the spell breaks. December is the month for survival, for stretching bonuses, and for feeding everyone without panic. It is not the month for defending an indulgence. The idea that you also need to pay ₱200 for popcorn just to feel like you’re having a “real movie experience” is the kind of middle-class theater cosplay that makes this math even crueler.
Streaming didn’t kill this tradition; it simply acknowledged the shift. Watching at home is cheaper and more forgiving. You can pause, talk, eat real food, include relatives who wouldn’t survive stadium seating, and still share a sense of occasion. It fits into domestic life rather than insisting on being an event. MMFF, by contrast, still wants to be the centerpiece at a time when people’s attention (and their money) is already maxed out.
Lana’s post inadvertently reveals that MMFF’s authority was never grounded in morality but in practicality. It worked because people didn’t have to think about it. Once audiences start doing the math, once they begin weighing it against food, rest, and time, the festival suddenly needs defending. Attendance is framed as a duty. Support becomes a moral argument. That’s not an act of tradition—that's simply pleading.
There’s also the odd insistence that Filipino cinema must peak at Christmas. We’ve normalized a system where local films matter only during one week of December, then vanish for the next eleven months. That doesn’t build audience loyalty—it trains viewers to treat Philippine cinema as a seasonal obligation, followed by relief when it’s over. The cycle is performed out of habit, not desire.
Lana is not outside this system. He directed Call Me Mother, one of last year’s MMFF entries, and benefited from the platform the festival still provides. That proximity is precisely why his recognition matters. The audience he imagines, the one the festival claims, is not the one quietly opting out. There is a gap, and it’s only widening.
Perhaps the more honest question isn’t how to make MMFF affordable again, but why we keep insisting it must remain central to Christmas at all. Traditions don’t survive because they are declared important; they endure because they remain compatible with how people live. When they stop fitting, people don’t collapse in outrage. They simply stop arranging their lives around them.
If MMFF is slowly detaching itself from Christmas, that doesn’t necessarily signal the decline of Philippine cinema. It may just mark the end of a ritual that no longer matches the season it’s attached to. And maybe that’s the part we’re still resisting—not the loss of a festival, but the realization that Christmas no longer needs it.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the opinions of PhilSTAR L!fe, its parent company and affiliates, or its staff.
