Lester Alfonso

BIRTHMARK

Inspired by a flashback about his birthmark, filmmaker Lester Alfonso is convinced that making a film will help confront a distant trauma rooted in cultural superstition. A follow-up to his award-winning film Twelve (2009), BIRTHMARK is a wry, sensitive, and candidly confessional exercise in creative anthropology. Soliciting fellow mark-bearers to add their testimonies to his own, Lester documents his journey to find peace and forgiveness, and to quiet the voice in his head. “It’s not only about the marks we are born with but the marks we imagine for ourselves.”

Twelve

If you could go back and speak to your 12-year-old self, what would you say? Philippine-born filmmaker Lester Alfonso attempts to answer this question by interviewing twelve diverse subjects, each of whom moved to Canada at age 12, like himself. On the cusp of teenage hormones, 12-year-olds often experience emotions with more intensity. Adapting to a new country at this age can be overwhelming. In collecting other people's stories, Lester is forced to face the demons from his own past. Will this journey finally set him free?