FILIPIÑANA

99 MINUTES | DRAMA | 2026

Synopsis

At a pristine resort on the outskirts of Manila, 17-year-old tee-girl Isabel tries to return a mislaid golf club to Dr. Palanca, the club president, discovering sinister revelations about her workplace, its elite members, and her own past.

Credits

DIRECTED BY: Rafael Manuel (feature debut)

EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS: Jia Zhang-Ke, Farhana Bhula, Jossette C. Atayde, Maria Sophia Atayde-Marudo, Anthony C. Isais, Grace Mariel M. Isais, Sebastian Raeuber and Francine Raeuber

PRODUCERS: Film4 (POOR THINGS, THE ZONE OF INTEREST), Pōtocol (INSIDE THE YELLOW COCOON SHELL), Epicmedia (VIET AND NAM, DIRECTORS FACTORY PHILIPPINES, IN MY MOTHER’S SKIN), Alex Polunin

PRESS QUOTES

"A rich, densely cinematic film."
"Has the precision of a vivid dream."

Screen Daily

"We are not in the neo-realist violence of Brillante Mendoza nor in dreamlike languor of Lav Diaz, the greatest current references in Philippine cinema; Rafael Manuel is a possible third way, where the narrative conventional and visual formalism mutually enrich each other."

Público

"Grabbed me from the very beginning, announcing itself as a masterwork....With ‘Filipiñana,’ Manuel opens new vistas in the future of the cinema.”

The New Yorker

"[A] mesmerizing, ultimately moving, class satire… Both everything and nothing happens in ‘Filipiñana,’ the cutting, confident, and ultimately formally captivating feature debut from writer-director Rafael Manuel…"

The Wrap

"A darkly comic, visually inventive...sits somewhere between Michael Haneke and David Lynch...its images remain embedded in the memory."

The Hollywood Reporter

“An invigorating dose of arch formalism in a sea of mainstream sincerity...In Filipiñana, the angle of a golf club can evoke suspense, a piece of fruit on the ground can feel like a tragedy, and a casual glance can take your breath away..."

Vulture

“Filipiñana slyly positions globalism as an act of forgetting unto itself.”

Indiewire