LORE

I was born into a Filipino family where storytelling wasn’t a hobby — it was a necessity. In a country shaped by poverty and resilience, we grow up learning how to find joy in the smallest places. We act. We sing. We laugh. We make stories out of nothing, because sometimes it’s all we have.

Movies were an escape, most definitely. As a kid, I didn’t just watch films — I studied them. I watched how characters carried pain, how they hid their pasts, how they broke, healed, and rose again. It made sense to me. And just as the characters in the films I loved found their way through adversity, I realized I could overcome my own.

My childhood was a patchwork of cultures, beliefs, and contradictions. I grew up Catholic, surrounded by ritual and reverence, but like many teenagers, I drifted. I thought I was searching for identity — in fashion, nightlife, music — but really, I was searching for meaning. I found myself drawn into the goth scene, convinced I understood the “dark aesthetic.” The leather, the eyeliner, the clubs, the drugs… it all felt cinematic, dramatic, alive. It gave me a sense of belonging, or at least the illusion of it.

Life has a way of teaching you the truth in places you least expect. Mine came through pain, disillusionment, and the constant ache of questions no lifestyle could answer. When you strip away the noise, the shows, the personas… you’re left with the voice you’ve been avoiding.

As I grew older and eventually found my way to Hollywood, I pursued film with the same hunger I once used to fill the emptiness. But filmmaking humbled me fast. When you’re working in the indie world, you don’t have million-dollar budgets or massive crews. All you have is story. And if your story isn’t gripping from the first sentence, the audience leaves. That sharpened me — taught me discipline, clarity, honesty.

Today, my purpose is clear: to honor God by telling stories that reveal the truth of the world — its beauty, its corruption, its redemption, and the spiritual battles we cannot see.