Filipino director Raya Martin is seen at the Cannes Film Festival in France in May. He will not be attending TIFF, but his film Independencia will be dedicated to slaim film critics Alexis Tioseco and Nika Bohinc. (Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images)

The screening of Raya Martin's film Independencia at the Toronto International Film Festival will be dedicated to the film critic couple who were shot dead in a home robbery in Manila on Tuesday.

Filipino director Martin will not be attending TIFF, according to Southeast Asian film programmer Raymond Phathanavirangoon. Martin will stay in Manila to mourn the loss of his close friend, the Filipino-Canadian Alexis Tioseco.

Tioseco, 29, and his girlfriend Nika Bohinc, 30, were found shot dead on Tuesday in Quezon City, part of Manila.

"Both are also friends to some of us programmers here at TIFF, and we are still in shock as we mourn their sudden passing," said Phathanavirangoon.

The couple's work was significant in the film community in the Philippines and abroad, said Phathanavirangoon.

Tioseco had started a website on Southeast Asian cinema called Criticine, and Bohinc was the head of FIPRESCI in Slovenia, editor of Ekran magazine and was involved in the Ljubljana International Film Festival, Isola Cinema Film Festival and IndieLisboa.

Tioseco was born in the Philippines but his family moved to Vancouver when he was two years old. He returned to the Philippines in 1997.

Independencia is a black and white film in English and Tagalog that chronicles the colonial occupation of the Philippines. The tragic tale revolves around three generations of a family and is in the classic style of Filipino melodrama, with an emphasis of folklore.