With The Keeper, Visual Artist TRNZ Steps Out of His Comfort Zone

At Cinemalaya 2026, Trnz and Nolan Fabular bring their first animated short to the big screen after its Art Fair Philippines debut.

If you’ve seen Trnz or Terence Eduarte’s paintings, familiar, tangible objects turn into a “misarrangement” of reality, with fragmented memories exploring solitude, introspection, and human experiences. Whimsical and dreamlike, Trnz now extends his practice beyond the canvas with his first animated short film, The Keeper.

Co-directed by Trnz and animator Nolan Fabular, The Keeper follows the story of a devoted keeper of a trophy hall, whose rigid routine is disrupted by an intruder. The film first premiered earlier this year at Art Fair Philippines as part of the ArtFairPH/Digital 2026 exhibition, and is now making its Cinemalaya debut this weekend.

When they were both still working in advertising together, Trnz and Fabular had wanted to dip their toes into animation. In advertising, animation was often the first idea to be cut.  “If animated work came up, we’d always try to push for it,” Trnz recalls. “But most of the time it didn’t push through because clients would say it looked expensive.”

While it was never given a shot back then, the pair continued to pursue the medium. What began as small-scale collaborations during the pandemic, including Unique Salonga’s music video for “Mga Katulad Mo,” slowly turned into conversations about making an original animated short. But like many animation and film projects, the first barrier was funding. Instead of attempting a feature-length film, Trnz invested proceeds from his paintings into creating a trailer, hoping it would convince supporters to take a chance on something outside his gallery practice.

That gamble paid off. Collectors who had previously purchased his artwork pooled resources to help finance the production, receiving production sketches, artwork, and credits in the film. “Luckily, we pulled enough money to finish what we wanted to accomplish,” Trnz says.

But The Keeper was not originally intended for the festival circuit. He first imagined the project as an installation. “What felt more viable was showing it at an art fair because I already knew a lot of people in the art scene,” he says. At Art Fair Philippines, the film’s reception encouraged the team to submit the film to Cinemalaya.

The film’s production stretched over roughly two years, while both creators continued their day jobs. The Keeper is tied to Trnz’s identity as an artist; as his style evolved, so did the film. “It needed to represent what I was doing at that moment as an artist,” he says. “We’d start on something, and by the time we looked at it months later, it didn’t fit anymore. So we had to do it again.”

For Fabular, the project also challenged conventional filmmaking. Rather than beginning with a screenplay, the pair built the story through drawings.  The visual language, he says, became the screenplay itself, allowing ideas to develop organically instead of translating written scenes into images later in production.

Budget limitations also became creative opportunities. After reassessing available resources, the team redesigned sequences to emphasize composition and atmosphere over constant movement, drawing inspiration from Japanese animation techniques that prioritize carefully constructed stillness. “We had to focus on our strengths,” Fabular says. “Let’s focus on the composition of the backgrounds. Let’s add frames only where they matter.”

Even after years of production, The Keeper remained unfinished in Trnzs eyes until audiences finally saw it. “I feel it’s similar to working on a painting,” he says. “It’s never done until it’s pulled out from your studio.” Before its debut during Art Fair Philippines, visual elements were still being added last minute, the audio was finalized the night before the exhibition, and the team continued to polish details until there was simply no more time.

For both filmmakers, The Keeper has become more than a short film, but proof that their unconventional path can work. “When I first started pitching this project, there was resistance,” Trnz admits. “People knew me for my paintings. I felt like they were asking, ‘Why are you doing this?””

Fabular is already looking ahead. “Let’s do this again next year,” he says with a laugh. “New story. Very Fresh.”