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Mr. Philippines 2025

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@finddistrictthree’s annual
mr. phl cultural pageant presented by
columbia’s @culigafilipina
🌟 NOV 16, 2025 @ 3PM 🌟

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MR PHILIPPINES 2025: PAGBABALIK-TANAW

Pagbabalik-tanaw, translating to “looking back,” beckons us to return to the past and learn from it—the sorrows and the overlooked joys. Even when we forget the names and the faces of the people who came before us, our inherited memories endure, intertwining with our own lives. It lives on in the way our Lolos and Lolas laugh, the food they cook, the stories they hold, and the songs they hum when no one is listening. But sometimes, we take our inherited memory for granted; we forget how to pass it on.

For this year’s pageant, we encourage you to actively express your inherited memory, whether it be from your lived experiences, your family’s renditions, or your definition of Filipino culture. Dance to it like it’s the Otso-Otso and belt it like your favorite OPM song. In the spirit of pagbabalik-tanaw, we invite everyone to reflect: how do you celebrate your memory and how does looking back help you to move forward, bravely, confidently, proudly Pinoy?

Sunday, November 16, 2025 @ 3pm
Roone Arledge Auditorium, Lerner, Columbia University by @mrphilippines_

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9 months ago

MR PHILIPPINES 2025: PAGBABALIK-TANAW

Pagbabalik-tanaw, translating to “looking back,” beckons us to return to the past and learn from it—the sorrows and the overlooked joys. Even when we forget the names and the faces of the people who came before us, our inherited memories endure, intertwining with our own lives. It lives on in the way our Lolos and Lolas laugh, the food they cook, the stories they hold, and the songs they hum when no one is listening. But sometimes, we take our inherited memory for granted; we forget how to pass it on.

For this year’s pageant, we encourage you to actively express your inherited memory, whether it be from your lived experiences, your family’s renditions, or your definition of Filipino culture. Dance to it like it’s the Otso-Otso and belt it like your favorite OPM song. In the spirit of pagbabalik-tanaw, we invite everyone to reflect: how do you celebrate your memory and how does looking back help you to move forward, bravely, confidently, proudly Pinoy?

Sunday, November 16, 2025 @ 3pm
Roone Arledge Auditorium, Lerner, Columbia University by @mrphilippines_

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9 months ago

MR PHILIPPINES 2025: PAGBABALIK-TANAW

Pagbabalik-tanaw, translating to “looking back,” beckons us to return to the past and learn from it—the sorrows and the overlooked joys. Even when we forget the names and the faces of the people who came before us, our inherited memories endure, intertwining with our own lives. It lives on in the way our Lolos and Lolas laugh, the food they cook, the stories they hold, and the songs they hum when no one is listening. But sometimes, we take our inherited memory for granted; we forget how to pass it on.

For this year’s pageant, we encourage you to actively express your inherited memory, whether it be from your lived experiences, your family’s renditions, or your definition of Filipino culture. Dance to it like it’s the Otso-Otso and belt it like your favorite OPM song. In the spirit of pagbabalik-tanaw, we invite everyone to reflect: how do you celebrate your memory and how does looking back help you to move forward, bravely, confidently, proudly Pinoy?

Sunday, November 16, 2025 @ 3pm
Roone Arledge Auditorium, Lerner, Columbia University by @mrphilippines_

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9 months ago

MR PHILIPPINES 2025 RECAP VIDEO | PAGBABALIK TANAW

Happy Holidays D3!
Our gift to you is a recap video of Mr Philippines 2025 🎄!
We’d love for you to experience and relive the moment.

Videographer: @geogurt by @mrphilippines_

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7 months ago

THAT IS A WRAP ON MR.PHILIPPINES 2025!

We thank everyone who was involved and can’t thank enough everyone who showed up for the show and for your reps!

Pagbabalik Tanaw means looking back, and we hope you can look back on this event and this opening video in the future!

Videographer: @geogurt by @mrphilippines_

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8 months ago

🌟 MEET THE JUDGES 🌟

Marc Manapat (he/him)

Marc is a fourth-year Film Production major at Seton Hall University, where his passion for storytelling meets over a decade of experience in performance and stagecraft. As both a filmmaker and performer, Marc understands the power of blending movement, sound, and emotion to create stories that truly resonate. His cinematic perspective allows him to see pageantry not just as competition, but as a living narrative — one that celebrates identity, creativity, and heart. Across the D3 Filipino diaspora, Marc has shared his artistry on the FLASH stage, performing, directing, and producing moments that bridge community and culture. His leadership as Events Coordinator and President of Seton Hall’s FLASH helped strengthen bonds through diversity, equity, and inclusion — values that continue to guide his work as a DEI and mental health advocate. Marc’s involvement as an essential component to five award-winning pageants led him to become Mr. Philippines 2024, and the first Mr. FLASH to earn that honor — a milestone shaped by dedication, authenticity, and love for the craft. Having once stood on this stage as a contestant and now returning as a judge, Marc is excited to see how this year’s contestants will bring their stories to life — channeling performance, charisma, design, and passion as they compete for the title that celebrates both culture and artistry. by @mrphilippines_

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🌟 MEET THE JUDGES 🌟

Amihan Ruiz (she/her)

Amihan Ruiz is currently an Adjunct Professor of Filipino at the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis at NYU’s College of Arts and Science. As with the majority of New Yorkers, she has a second job, as an art programming administrator for Heartshare, a non-profit providing services for people with developmental disabilities.

These, among many other endeavors, are part of her 15+ years as an arts-for-advocacy professional. With her background in theater, anthropology and psychology, Amihan fuses social sciences and the arts to resist silencing and erasure. Her community projects have included developing a cockfighting pit into a theater venue in collaboration with the National Commission of Culture and the Arts in the Philippines. Or helping imprisoned youth campaign for their rights through performances, a project under the auspices (aus-pisses) of the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Academy of Political Management. Or transforming the narratives of fugitives into music albums, through projects undertaken with the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, and the Women’s Global Network for Reproductive Rights.

Amihan is a theater scholar of the Philippine High School for the Arts. She earned her Bachelor of Arts in Social Sciences at the Ateneo De Manila and pursued her post-grad at the Asian Center of the University of the Philippines, Diliman. Having trained with the Philippine Educational Theater Association and the Cultural Center of the Philippines, she’s facilitated the learning of over 2,000 students of creative pedagogy and theater-for-development. Her research, published under ACT Ruiz, focuses on the safe spaces and placemaking practices of displaced communities. She produces music under MuroAmi. by @mrphilippines_

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🌟 MEET THE JUDGES 🌟

Gina Apostol (she/her)

Gina Apostol won the 2022 Rome Prize in Literature to write her next novel, on womanhood and radicalism in fin-de-siécle (fanh-de-sye-clah) Europe. She was the 2024 Inouye (Inoy) Chair for Democratic Ideals at the University of Hawaii-Manoa. Her body of work has been shortlisted for the John Dos Passos Prize, longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, and in the Philippines has been honored with the Alagad ni Balagtas award, among others. Her last book, La Tercera, was selected as an Editors’ Choice of the NYT. Insurrecto was named by Publishers’ Weekly as one of the Ten Best Books of 2018, selected as an Editor’s Choice of the NYT, and shortlisted for the Dayton Prize. Gun Dealers’ Daughter won the 2013 PEN/Open Book Award and was shortlisted for the William Saroyan Prize. Bibliolepsy and The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata, out in the US from Soho Press, both won the Juan Laya Prize for the Novel (Philippine National Book Award). Bibliolepsy was one of the New Yorker’s Best Books of 2022, and The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata was an Editor’s Choice of the NYT.

She has received fellowships from Civitella Ranieri and Emily Harvey Foundation, among other residencies, and has served as writer-in-residence at Vassar College and Phillips Exeter Academy, among other institutions. Her essays and stories have appeared in The New York Times, Los Angeles Review of Books, Washington Post, Foreign Policy, Gettysburg Review, Massachusetts Review, and others. She lives in New York City and western Massachusetts and grew up in Tacloban, Leyte, in the Philippines. She teaches at the Fieldston School in New York City, the undergraduate writing program at Barnard College, and the graduate writing program at The New School. by @mrphilippines_

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…tomorrow 🌟 @ 3pm, Columbia University Lerner Roone Arledge Auditorium. by @mrphilippines_

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🌟 MEET THE MR PHL 2025 REPS 🌟

Anthony Michael Salazar Zamora (he/him)
Fordham University- Rose Hill’s FUPAC
Major: Applied Accounting & Finance
Year: 2029

sa bawat alaala, mayroong natatnging kwneto.

Lemery, Batangas. Milan, Italy. Jersey City, New Jersey. Tokyo, Japan. San Francisco, California. Clifton, New Jersey. Pampanga, Central Luzon. Bayonne, New Jersey.

Wherever the destination may take you, you will always get something out of it. Externally, it may be some Jollibee, pasalubong, or that performative post for Instagram. (don’t forget mom’s Facebook too). But internally, beyond the surface, you gain something far more valuable: memories. Whether moments of joy, hours of heartbreak, months of hardship, or an infinite amount of love, all the memories you hold shapes who you are.

Throughout my whole life, I’ve realized that looking back isn’t about living in the past, but carrying it with you for the present and beyond. Every mano po, every cry, every smile, every trip back to the homeland, every story told at the dinner table, and every single personal interaction remind me that my roots are not just part of my identity.
They’re the foundation that allows for growth. They’re the substance that makes me, me: Anthony Michael Zamora, an eighteen year old first-generation Filipino American.

And so Pagbablik Tanaw constantly serves as a reminder that a whole village is always behind me, a true Filipino characteristic I’ll never take for granted. It reminds me of my parents’ 24/7 sacrifices, Titos and Titas that comfort me, whether from Jersey City or across the world in the Philippines, and the consistent love from every single person I hold dear to my heart. That, that right there is the artistic beauty Pagbablik Tanaw offers.

I choose to honor all these moments because within every memory, every connection, every person, I not only understand who I was, but who I’m still becoming.

#youknowyouwantZAMORA by @mrphilippines_

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⏰ 24 HOURS & 44 MINUTES until Mr. Philippines 2025!

These reps have been working hard for months, and the stage is almost ready. Are YOU ready to cheer them on?! ✨

💥 REP YOUR ORG & YOUR REP IN THE COMMENTS!! Let’s show some love for EVERYONE! by @mrphilippines_

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🌟 MEET THE MR PHL 2025 REPS 🌟

Bernie Malicsi (he/him)
Columbia University’s Liga Filipina
Major: Biology Pre-Med Track
Year: 2028

Catch this HEAT, it’s BERNIE!

As I reflect on my past, I see both happiness and hardship, recognizing this binary is how memory can truly be appreciated. Our culture often shuns any show of personal struggle. It’s easier to “keep it hidden” than talk about it. Reconciling with these difficult memories is a step forward in breaking the stigma on this part of Filipino culture. I learned that confronting the “uncomfortable” is a form of strength. The hardships I look back upon makes me admire how much I have grown.

That’s why I celebrate my memory by appreciating the simple things; moments taken for granted. We should cherish the present before it becomes the past, but there’s beauty in reminiscing. I remember climbing over the house gate to roam around Jubileeville in Los Baños while my grandma looked for me; eating balut with asin and suka at night; taking the tricycle to Fr. Angelico Lipani School; having customized tarpaulin birthday banners; and buying ice candy from my neighbor.

I move forward by making more memories with family and friends. They bring worth to the memories we have. I am grateful to have lived a Pinoy childhood and continue to live as a proud Pinoy!

#thirddegreeBERN by @mrphilippines_

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