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Dance of the Steel Bars poster
Recommendations based on

Dance of the Steel Bars

2013 Movie Drama

This riveting feature film about redemption follows Frank Parish, a retired US fireman and philanthropist who finds himself wrongly accused of murder and jailed in the Philippines. Stuck in prison, Frank was beginning to lose faith in everything he believed in until he becomes friends with Mando, a convicted murderer who denies his passion for dancing just to prove his masculinity and Allona, a transsexual who tries to contribute to prison reforms by teaching his fellow inmates dance exercises. They get involved in a tricky struggle between the positive changes initiated by the new warden and the corrupt system that weighs down the inmates' chance to become better individuals. Frank finds himself caught in an intricate web of lies and must choose between concealing what he knows to keep himself out of danger or to help his fellow inmates by revealing the truth. Will he remain on the sidelines as an observer, or will he dance the dance of the steel bars?

Same cast & genre

19 Shares actors and at least one genre with this title
Call Me Alma poster
FILM

Alma, Azi Acosta, is a high-end bar girl. She has decided that prostitution is her profession, her life, her means to achieve her dreams and her happiness. She caters to all men who can afford her price. But she favors two men: a rich lawyer and a bank executive whom she calls Tiger Joe and Kabayo respectively. Another regular customer is a student who has professed his undying love for her. Alma's routine life is disturbed when Sheila, Jaclyn Jose, an aging street prostitute, introduces herself to Alma as her mother who sold her to strangers after birth. This meeting will open the door to Alma's past that she has refused to confront. A long-lost ailing mother, the search for a father, and the truths of a painful past will test the values of these two women who have become victims of poverty and men. In the end, Alma and Sheila will make choices that will define them not only as individuals but as women.

Call Me Alma

2023 Drama
Quezon poster
FILM

A historical drama focusing on Manuel L. Quezon years after the Philippine Revolution during the American occupation. When his fight for independence from the United States is put to the test, Quezon finds himself playing the brutal game of politics to outmaneuver his rivals — including Leonard Wood, Sergio Osmeña, and Joven Hernando. In Quezon’s relentless quest for power, he ultimately faces off with Emilio Aguinaldo in the 1935 presidential elections, using charm and favoritism as both weapons and currency, in a campaign that ultimately changes the face of Philippine politics and history.

Quezon

2025 Drama
Hibla poster
FILM

Isabel and Clara are two childhood friends separated by fate. Isabel is a naive provincial lass who works as an indigenous fabric weaver while Clara is the liberated city girl. Clara has gone wild after her mother runs off with another man. The two meet after years of separation when Clara returns to the barrio to visit her father, Roman. But their cultural difference further separates them as Lando, Isabel's boyfriend, enters into the picture. Lando, frustrated with Isabel's conservatism and idealism, turns his attention to Clara, which irked Isabel. Isabel, in turn, seduces Clara's father.

Hibla

2002 Romance
José Rizal poster
FILM

Accused of treason, Dr. Jose P. Rizal awaits trial and meets with his colonial government-appointed counsel, Luis Taviel de Andrade. The two build the case and arguments for the defense as significant events in the central figure's life prior to his incarceration unfold. Upon hearing Rizal's life story, Taviel begins to realize that the accused not just is innocent but exhibits in fact all the qualities of an extraordinary man. When the mock trial unreels, Taviel is all set to act as the prime advocate for his client as Rizal himself is about to give an earth-moving speech to defend his honor and address his countrymen. Meanwhile, the Spanish authorities have worked out the vast political machinery to ensure a guilty verdict. A revolution waits in the wings.

José Rizal

1998 Drama
Lahar: Paraisong Abo poster
FILM

In the aftermath of the eruption of Mount Pinatubo, a volcano dormant for more than 400 years, the residents of the whole town of San Simon in Pampanga was engulfed by dust and thick mudflow called lahar. The whole surviving residents of the devastated community are relocated to transitional evacuation center, a tent city, where different and unique personalities meet: Sheila, a migrant worker from Germany who is struggling to keep her family intact at all costs; Sonia who is looking for her missing husband while pretending as a handicapped so she can beg on the streets; Ditas, who returns in Pampanga after getting pregnant in Manila; and Elena, a mother who lost her whole family in the eruption, yet she keeps a positive outlook in life that as long as she remembers her relatives no amount of tragedy could keep her from reminiscing of their once peaceful lives.

Lahar: Paraisong Abo

1997 Drama

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10 Ranked across franchise, crew, cast, themes, genre, era and audience scores