Filipiñana

Italian Premiere | In Competition | White Mulberry Award Candidate

Philippines, 2026, 100’, Filipino, English, Ilokano

Directed by: Rafael Manuel
Screenplay: Rafael Manuel
Cinematography (color): Xenia Patricia
Editing: Rafael Manuel
Production Design: Tatjana Fanny Honegger
Sound: Vincent Villa
Producers: Jeremy Chua, Alex Polunin, Bianca Balbuena, Bradley Liew, Nadia Turincev, Omar El Kadi, Rafael Manuel
Co-Producer: Sam Chua Weishi
Executive Producers: Farhana Bhula, Anthony C. Isais, Grace Mariel M. Isais, Maria Sophia Atayde-Marudo, Jossette C. Atayde, Sebastian Raeuber, Francine Raeuber, Jia Zhang-Ke
Cast: Jorrybell Agoto, Carmen Castellanos, Teroy Guzman, Carlitos Siguion-Reyna, Isabel Sicat Nour Hooshmand, Micah Musa, Elle Velasco, Angeli Bayani

Date of First Release in Territory: January 26th, 2026

Calling your debut film Filipiñana is audacious, signaling that you’re ready to tackle the big themes of national identity and history. Filipiñana lives up to this challenge, breaking out of the usual sights of poverty seen in Filipino films playing at American and European film festivals into the calm, verdant, and yet politically fraught setting of a golf course.

Golf courses are among the last green spaces in Metro Manila, with some of the largest occupying around 1 million sq. m., which could fit many houses or residential developments (approximately 20,000 socialized housing units in that area alone). Golf courses are where the people in power converse, socialize, and even make decisions of national concern, making these places sacred despite appearing as anomalies amid the lands they’re colonizing.

Filipiñana shows us the marked class disparity between the tee girl Isabel (a brilliant Jorrybell Agoto) and the golf club elites, including the owner and the subject of Isabel’s affection, Dr. Palanca (Teroy Guzman). This pronounced difference is apparent in the opening scene, which shows us a neighborhood lining up for water, and then cuts to the lush, manicured greenery of the golf course.

This becomes a stage for a show of patriarchal force. There is talk of mistresses, land owning, and transfer of management. Composited shots of Isabel and Clara, an upper class young woman, show us the calm environment she is thrust into, coming from a world of noise and struggle. The film presents the golf course’s complex as an amusement park, full of empty, unused spaces, excess food, and entertainment. But there is also a display of female allyship and bonds of sisterhood, linking them in this harsh and confounding world.

The frames and color of Filipiñana are one of the largest departures from its original 2020 short film. In 2024, the short became part of the Criterion Channel’s 2024 program, “When the Apocalypse Is Over: New Independent Philippine Cinema,” which highlighted films from young Filipino filmmakers who explore “genre conventions to imagine stories of absurd, alienating worlds and lonely characters longing for something or someone outside the limited reach of the frame.” In the full-length film, Manuel makes full use of cinematic language to accentuate his large themes of structural inequality and the slow decay brought about by social politics, amusingly using an aspect ratio that compresses the vastness of golf courses and puts the characters in a compressed and claustrophobic frame. The colors are heightened, the pale blues, greens, and pinks pointed in their brazen demarcation of who labors and who enjoys the fruits of these toils.

That the film is called Filipiñana, either referring to the traditional dress worn by Filipino women or to a section of materials about the Philippines, is Manuel’s way of categorizing his work. The film runs aplenty of women, all prey and ready to be taken advantage of by men, even workers (“I’ll show you where [the swimming pool] is if you show me what your bathing suit looks like,” a guard tells Isabel). But they’re not all docile. There are authoritarians and blank slates, unsure yet where they’ll be going next. Filipiñana is a puzzle box to be unraveled and decoded, and like the film, slowness is the key to immersing yourself in its pleasures.

Rafael Manuel

Manuel is based between Amsterdam, London, and Manila. His short films have been screened at Locarno, IFFR, and FIDMarseiiles. He is the last film protege at the Rolex Arts Initiative, where he was mentored by Jia Zhang-ke. Filipiñana is his debut feature-length film. The short film Filipiñana won the Silver Bear Jury Prize at the 70th Berlinale International Film Festival and was nominated for Best British Short Film at the British Independent Film Awards 2020. In 2026, the full-length version of Filipiñana premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and later had its European premiere at the Berlinale.

Selected filmography

2019 – Dog Eater