In "i grew an inch when my father died," P. R. Monencillo Patindol assembles a mosaic of moments plucked from the lives of three boys from a riverside village in Leyte, the Philippines. Brothers Ge and Kenken are adrift after the murder of their alcoholic father by a villager. The boys share a bond with the murderer’s son, Ricor. While Kenken stops speaking and becomes aloof, elder sibling Ge is both drawn to Ricor and saddled with a grudge. 

Patindol’s deeply felt debut feature flows like the river it is set around, with a poetic texture. The cinematic grammar is idiosyncratic, marked by a creative use of desaturated colour, abrupt shifts in compositional scale and a striking mix of static and handheld cinematography. 

Both severe and sympathetic, Patindol allows his young protagonists to float between states of anger and desire, childhood bliss and precocious adulthood, and horror and healing. Refusing definitive moral statements, his film presents a complex picture of lives lived in the shadow of crime, love and faith. 

from International Film Festival Rotterdam
Srikanth Srinivasan