This is a revenge drama, but do not expect an operatic romp of blood and violence in the South Korean fashion. It comes from Filipino film-maker Lav Diaz, whose films are known for their seriousness and length. At just under four hours, this film is only half as long as his last work.
It tells the story of Horacia (Charo Santos-Concio), a woman released from prison after 30 years. She is poor and the man who framed her - a former lover - is rich, and so unfolds a story that, like so many of Diaz's works, digs into class and wealth in Filipino society.
For those with shorter attention spans, the Southeast Asian Short Film Competition section is the place to find plenty of variety, usually of a high quality.
There are three anthologies, broadly grouped under the classifications of "political landscapes", "the Asian psyche" and "loss". In the loss section is the gorgeous nine-minute animation, Grandma Loleng, from 21-year-old Che Tagyamon from the Philippines. This wordless neon-coloured collage of drawings, photographs and music deals with how a joyful present cannot be safe from terrible memories of wartime.
The Road To Mandalay (NC16, 110 minutes) deals with strife of another kind - the exploitation of foreign labour in Thailand. Celebrated Taiwanese film-maker Midi Z likes to go back to his birthplace of Myanmar for inspiration and, in this Golden Horse-nominated work, two young people, played by Wu Ke Xi and Kai Ko, find romance and terror after they make an illegal crossing into hostile territory.
The feature-length movies in the Singapore Panorama section usually get all the attention, but the short films need love too.
Recent School of the Arts graduate Khym Fong directed the nineminute Mao Shan Wang, about an elderly man and his reveries as he picks durians. The 18-year-old, speaking to The Straits Times, says the work is about "the rituals of grief".
"People cope with adversity in different ways," she says, and in the case of the older man, he finds comfort in the slow process of hunting fruit in the jungle.
The Cinema Today section is the place to find works from North America and Europe that have set festivals buzzing.
Standouts this year include British documentary Notes On Blindness (PG, 90 minutes), based on the audio diaries of writer and theologian John Hull, who went blind in 1983 after years of failing vision. The Guardian gave it a full five stars, calling it an "articulate, eloquent and soul-searchingly honest" look at what it means to lose one's sight.
Certain Women (rating to be announced, 107 minutes) stars Laura Dern, Kristen Stewart and Michelle Williams in an anthology based on the short stories of Maile Meloy. The rugged terrain of Montana is the common thread in this work from a stalwart of independent cinema, Kelly Reichardt, who is known for telling stories from the female perspective.
In contrast to Reichardt's portrayals of women's lives, Tickled (rating to be announced, 92 minutes) is all about men being men, but in ways some might find strange.
New Zealanders David Farrier and Dylan Reeve follow a tip about the bizarre underground sport of "competitive endurance tickling" and go to the United States to make a documentary about it. They got what they wanted, but not without a fight from the secretive and litigation-happy organisers of the event.
This work was nominated for a Grand Jury Prize at this year's Sundance Film Festival.
Virtual reality (VR) is supposed to be the next breakthrough in cinema.
In the talks section of the festival, a Singapore production house is about to embark on an ambitious project that few have done - make a VR film that tells a story, rather than take viewers on just a virtual tour of a location.
Mr Pok Yue Weng, 44, co-founder of the Creative Room label, will speak about the planning and work that will go into his yet-to-be-made mystery-thriller and there will be a chance for the audience to test the technology.
His five-minute film, commissioned by cable television provider StarHub, will be a "big gamble" because of how it takes the plunge into uncharted waters.
His proposed VR-360 project - which lets users wearing headsets look around a space and interact with it - will be filmed using real objects and actors, rather than the commonly used computer graphics.
On the Web, there are VR haunted-house tours, music videos, and tours of space or the sea. These do not have a narrative, but that is what he wants to do with the technology.
"The real challenge is using VR to tell a story," he says.
Fascinated by the timelessness of large families