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    "headline": "Ella Arcangel, a Filipino adult animated horror film about a young witch, premieres November 13 in Manila",
    "description": "Ella Arcangel: Ballad of Tooth and Claw, a Filipino adult animated horror film voiced by Bianca Umali, opens the QCinema festival on November 13.",
    "datePublished": "2026-11-11T11:21:00+00:00",
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    "keywords": "Bianca Umali, Ella Arcangel, GMA Pictures, Mervin Malonzo, QCinema",
    "articleBody": "A 12-year-old witch from the slums of Manila gets her own feature film this week. Ella Arcangel: Ballad of Tooth and Claw, a Filipino animated horror-fantasy made for grown-ups, premieres on November 13 as the opening film of the QCinema International Film Festival in Quezon City. The film is called Ella Arcangel: Awit ng Pangil at Kuko in Filipino. It is adapted from Julius Villanueva’s 2017 komik (the Filipino word for comics) series, and it marks the directing debut of Mervin Malonzo, a National Book Award winner best known for his own horror comic Tabi Po. The two men wrote the screenplay together. Who is Ella Arcangel? Ella is a mambabarang, a kind of witch from Philippine folklore who works dark magic. In the film she takes over from her grandmother as the person who deals with the supernatural trouble in her neighborhood, Barangay Masikap. When a monster appears and seems to be behind the deaths of a playmate’s family, she has to work out who the real monsters are, human or otherwise. That last idea is why the comic built a loyal following. Its distributor, GMA Pictures, says the series earned praise for taking on corruption, poverty, unemployment and the government’s drug war through a horror story. The festival synopsis keeps that thread: the hunt for the creature runs alongside a drug war that pushes on in the background. Bianca Umali, a television actress in the Philippines, voices Ella. Comedian Michael V. voices a character named Mimiw. Arnold Buena and Joaquin Santos wrote the music. Six years from short to feature The project did not arrive in one jump. Here is how a 2020 short became a theatrical feature: May 2020: Malonzo and Villanueva release a short, Ella Arcangel: Oyayi Sa Dilim, billed as the first episode of a planned animated series. September 2021: the second episode grows into a full feature after the pair secure a grant from the Film Development Council of the Philippines. 2023: the feature is picked for the QCinema Project Market, the festival’s industry program. October 2025: the first trailer arrives. Spring 2026: GMA Pictures teases, then reveals, the voice of Ella. November 13, 2026: world premiere as QCinema’s opening film. The film is produced by Manny Angeles and Avid Liongoren through Rocketsheep Studio, with GMA Pictures, Twenty Manila and Haliya Publishing. Together with the docudrama 58th, it is among the first animated features GMA Pictures has co-produced and distributed. Why international viewers should care Adult animation from Southeast Asia rarely reaches festivals abroad, and Philippine folk horror (aswang, mambabarang and their cousins) is mostly known outside the country through comics and online fan translations. A feature with a studio distributor behind it gives that tradition a bigger stage. It also lands in a busy season for animation aimed at adults. Badiyaa has followed Tangles, the animated drama about Alzheimer’s disease with Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Seth Rogen, and the long road of Coyote vs. Acme into the Best Animated Feature race. More screen stories are on our entertainment page. QCinema, which the Quezon City government organizes each year, runs from November 13 to 22. No release date outside the Philippines has been announced. Further reading Wikipedia: Ella Arcangel: Ballad of Tooth and Claw Illustrative image. Image: RFNirmala, CC0 via Wikimedia Commons This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by our Editorial Desk. How we work.",
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