Sila Sila is essentially an LGBT ghost story, or more specifically an LGBT ghosting story, in which a young man whose breakups tend to be messy and have severe and traumatic repercussions finds himself not only confronting the people on the receiving end of those breakups but navigating feelings he had thought long gone but are now suddenly rekindled.

“What does it mean to ghost someone? To be gone and still be there. How does one capture that presence, that energy, that feeling? That darkness, that lightness?” Giancarlo Abrahan, who directed the 2017 Cinema One Originals Best Picture winner Paki and is returning this year, poses these provocative questions as a way into his new film, which is another take on group dynamics, focusing this time on an estranged group of friends and the feelings that linger long after the friendship has drifted apart.

“Ghosting—this modern horror—does not really deal with a scary event or a monstrous being. But it still deals with fear. A fear that feels and sounds sad and funny at the same time. Although it isn't exactly friendly ghosting. This ghosting still inflicts pain. It can be deliberate or unintentional, visible or unseen, deeply felt or numbing. This pain has its own form of violence. It is that violence that I am interested in. And that is what the film tries to capture.”

What if the one that let you get away comes back? Kaya mo?

Gio Gahol and Topher Fabregas star in Sila Sila which premieres on November 8, 7:30 PM at Trinoma.