Screenwriter Rafael Manuel’s feature directorial debut film, Filipiñana, premiered at the 2026 Sundance and is an extension of his 2020 Berlinale Silver Bear award-winning short film, with the same title. While the film is set at the fictitious Alabang Country Club, the insight into class disparities and labor exploitation experienced, specifically by women in the film, is very real.
Against the setting of a too-hot-summer sun, Manuel invites viewers to slow down and relax as we follow alongside Isabel (Jorrybell Agoto), a 17-year-old Illokana girl who is the new tee-girl at Alabang Country Club. Treated as insiders to the inner workings of the production of pleasing the bourgeoisie, we watch our protagonist navigate the class and hierarchical nuances of her position while seeking to return what she has deemed a valuable piece of material, an ordinary golf club, to her new boss, Dr. Palanca.
Along the way, Isabel inspects the natural beauty of rotting fruit, not good for human consumption, being devoured by nature, and the cascade of sunlight through the trees, landing on skin and manicured greenery made to fit the ever-changing desires of the upper class. Perhaps one of the film’s highlights is the way we observe the detailed, choreographed dance of the club’s employees, who synchronize to prepare the spaces for guests who are seemingly too caught up in their ordinary, mundane lives to notice or care. Perhaps more importantly, viewers learn they are unassuming bystanders as Isabel uncovers the true horrors beneath the club’s carefully constructed landscape, including her loss of ancestral knowledge, stolen memories, and her own past.
Manuel’s use of imagery successfully personifies nature, making it a worthy storyteller and deuteragonist, bringing a beauty to this film that speaks to held memory and ancestral knowledge. It is through this re-memory that Isabel is able to recall how the disruption of her own memories was caused by rain and wind when Dr. Palancas’ trucks came and took her, washing away her language and lands, causing her to forget.
Even in those moments that are filled with seemingly unnecessary silence, we are offered an opportunity to explore Isabel’s understanding of loss through a hummed song with forgotten words and title. Understanding that all she has left are melodies that come through like “patches of grass,” we later learn that the song is an old Illokana ballad that holds valuable knowledge, picking the wrong fruit that, perhaps, extends beyond the tree.
Manuel also uses nature to demonstrate class difference when we see luxurious soft green grass in abundance, providing space for lovers to sleep under tall shade trees, and the upper class’s ability to still enjoy nature as they indulge in feasts that lead to wasted food the workers can’t touch. In contrast, we watch in horror as workers are abruptly hauled away by police for resting in the same grass and chastised for eating the wasted abundance melting in the hot sun.
In the end, Filipiñana is an important piece that speaks to the way land and nature hold the memories we deem forgotten, and that alone makes it a worthy watch. However, the long pauses in spaces distract from the movement of thought, and the camera’s lingering gaze in spaces that should have had a bit more privacy. This by no means takes away from Manuel’s successful use of imagery to tell a story, but more so to his tightening up scenes to better capture the time between provoking thought and mental distraction to better meet audiences where they are.
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