'Filipiñana' at The Nightlight 🎬
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"A Dark and Surreal Satire Highlights Class Disparity in the Philippines" - The Hollywood Reporter
17-year-old Isabel navigates the opulent pavilions and lush green landscapes of Dr. Palanca’s luxury golf course as a newly-hired “tee girl.” Meticulously composed, highly stylized, and guided by precisely choreographed movement and deadpan delivery, FILIPIÑANA unfolds through the gradual accumulation of everyday encounters between staff and the wealthy clients of this secluded country club on the outskirts of Manila. When she attempts to return a lost golf club, Isabel uncovers a dark underbelly beneath the club’s pristine surfaces, in this sweltering, pastel-colored fairy tale of class division, institutional patriarchy, and invisible violence.
Winner of the Sundance Film Festival’s Special Jury Award for Creative Vision and executive produced by Jia Zhangke, Rafael Manuel’s feature debut expands his Berlinale Silver Bear–winning 2020 short into a work of immaculate control and sunlit menace. Isabel, 17 and newly employed, works as a tee girl at an exclusive country club outside Manila, placing balls for the powerful men who cross the verdant course as if the land had always belonged to them. Around her, sprinklers hiss, golf carts glide, staff wait with practiced patience. All the while, the rules of the club seem to echo a larger national order. Manuel turns golf and perfect lawns into a savage satire of capitalism, building suspense from tiny humiliations, absurd rituals, and gorgeous, poisonous details. What begins as a droll portrait of service and privilege slowly bares very sharp teeth. A Kino Lorber release. - Film at Lincoln Center
17-year-old Isabel navigates the opulent pavilions and lush green landscapes of Dr. Palanca’s luxury golf course as a newly-hired “tee girl.” Meticulously composed, highly stylized, and guided by precisely choreographed movement and deadpan delivery, FILIPIÑANA unfolds through the gradual accumulation of everyday encounters between staff and the wealthy clients of this secluded country club on the outskirts of Manila. When she attempts to return a lost golf club, Isabel uncovers a dark underbelly beneath the club’s pristine surfaces, in this sweltering, pastel-colored fairy tale of class division, institutional patriarchy, and invisible violence.
Winner of the Sundance Film Festival’s Special Jury Award for Creative Vision and executive produced by Jia Zhangke, Rafael Manuel’s feature debut expands his Berlinale Silver Bear–winning 2020 short into a work of immaculate control and sunlit menace. Isabel, 17 and newly employed, works as a tee girl at an exclusive country club outside Manila, placing balls for the powerful men who cross the verdant course as if the land had always belonged to them. Around her, sprinklers hiss, golf carts glide, staff wait with practiced patience. All the while, the rules of the club seem to echo a larger national order. Manuel turns golf and perfect lawns into a savage satire of capitalism, building suspense from tiny humiliations, absurd rituals, and gorgeous, poisonous details. What begins as a droll portrait of service and privilege slowly bares very sharp teeth. A Kino Lorber release. - Film at Lincoln Center
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