Kidlat Tahimik, whose Perfumed Nightmare was an international success, again creates in Turumba a sardonic picture of the growing Western influence on village life in the Philippines. The story is seen through the eyes of a young boy whose family makes papier-maché figures to sell at the village's annual Turumba festival. The family traditionally works painstakingly on each of the dolls, which are prized for their expressive eyes. When they are discovered by a German department store buyer, who orders 500 dolls for the Oktoberfest, the effects of creeping capitalism begin to be felt in the family; by the time the order for 25,000 mascots for the Munich Olympics has been filled, it has spread to the whole village, which has gone high-tech. Tahimik employs his own family in the film--including his nephew as the young protagonist and his wife as the German buyer. Turumba was originally produced for German television as a documentary on Philippine religious festivals; when Tahimik cut his own feature film from the footage, this very different satire resulted.