Biography

Apa Agbayani is a Filipino writer-director who makes films and music videos. Apa was one of the recipients of NewFest’s New Voices Filmmaker Grant in 2024. His short “Abutan man tayo ng house lights (When the house lights come on)” received the QCShorts production grant and premiered at the QCinema International Film Festival in the Philippines in 2023, later playing NewFest 36, Queer East and LAAPFF. Apa’s previous credits include “Somewhere all the boys are birds” (2023), which premiered at NewFest 35 in New York, and “We kept warm” (2021), which was released online via Tarzeer Pictures. He has two forthcoming short films in postproduction, the Philippine gothic “Is this desire?” and the situationship mini-doc “Laundry day lovers.”