If you are looking to start your journey, try for a classic experience, That Thing Called Tadhana for romance, or On the Job for a rush of adrenaline. Welcome to the world of Pinoy movies—your watchlist just got a lot longer

To watch 123 Filipino movies is to laugh at the same slapstick, cry at the same funeral scenes, and curse the same corrupt politicians. It is to realize that every frame, no matter how cheap the lighting or how familiar the plot, is a prayer.

Here are more Filipino movies that you should watch:

The modern era of Filipino cinema has seen a surge in critically acclaimed films that have gained international recognition.

The first thirty are all about hagulgol (intense sobbing). You learn that a Filipino family is not a family until there is a long-lost twin, a contested rice field, or a mother dying of tuberculosis under a narra tree. You discover the genius of Lino Brocka’s Maynila: Sa Mga Kuko ng Liwanag —where the city is a beast with concrete teeth. You realize that poverty is not a backdrop; it is a character.

To have watched 123 Filipino movies is to have heard the kundiman of a thousand broken hearts and the machine-gun rattle of a kanto brawl. It is to have sat through the golden age of LVN and Sampaguita Pictures, where Rogelio de la Rosa’s baritone was the law, and Charito Solis’s tears were a monsoon.