‘Miss Intrams’ turns a campus pageant into a quiet swan song of selfhood

A Mindanaoan queer short at the Puregold CinePanalo Film Festival reframes pageantry as a space of identity, tension, and quiet transformation

A queer story from Mindanao is stirring anticipation at this year’s Puregold CinePanalo Film Festival, as “Miss Intrams” arrives not with grand spectacle, but with a deeply personal premise—a swan song to a self that no longer feels like home.

Directed by General Santos–based filmmaker Henri Marie Belimac, the 19-minute student short stands out as the only Mindanaoan entry in its category, bringing with it a perspective shaped by lived queerness and regional identity.

At its center is Zyan Barriento (Mariella Cuerpo), a queer transmasc college student who steps into a campus beauty pageant—not necessarily to win, but to confront something far more internal. The film frames the familiar world of pageantry as a space of tension, where performance and identity blur in ways that are both revealing and uneasy.

“Miss Intrams was born from a question that refuses easy answers: what does it mean to perform a version of yourself that no longer feels like home?” the director shares.

An uneasy stage of transformation

Rather than leaning into the expected highs of competition, “Miss Intrams” hints at quieter moments—those that unfold away from the spotlight, where gestures, silences, and small shifts carry the weight of change.

“In the Philippines, beauty pageants are more than spectacle—they are rituals, inheritances, and stages where femininity is carefully rehearsed and perfected… offering visibility while subtly scripting who gets to be seen.”

The film teases a world where visibility comes with conditions, and where the act of being seen can feel just as confining as it is affirming. It is in these in-between spaces—backstage, in fleeting connections, in moments of stillness—that the story begins to take shape.

“The film resists easy binaries… allowing these truths to coexist within the same body, the same family, the same stage.”

As the only Mindanaoan voice in the student shorts lineup, Belimac’s work signals a widening of the festival’s storytelling lens—one that makes room for narratives that are both deeply personal and quietly political.

“At its core, ‘Miss Intrams’ is about farewell—not as loss, but as care. To let go of who you once were is not betrayal, but acknowledgment.”

Without giving too much away, “Miss Intrams” suggests that not all transformations are loud or definitive. Some unfold gently, almost imperceptibly—until one day, recognition arrives.

“‘Makita tika’ carries the film’s pulse: to see oneself fully, without distortion or apology, is perhaps the most radical act of all.”