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Beneath the pristine floor of a rustic membership within the Philippines, a sinister buried fact.
One of many movies able to make a splash out of the Sundance Movie Pageant‘s 2026 World Cinema Dramatic Competitors is first-time author/director Rafael Manuel’s “Filipiñana.” With a surreal visible language that hat-tips everybody from Jacques Tati to Michael Haneke and the filmmaker’s longtime mentor Jia Zhangke, the movie is a placing, startling class critique based mostly on Manuel’s personal Silver Bear-winning 2020 quick movie (which you’ll be able to watch now on the Criterion Channel, by the way in which).
IndieWire debuts an unique teaser of the movie beneath, an excerpted musical interlude within the film that provides a way of actuality dislodging from itself on the stately, posh golf course.
Right here’s extra of the movie from its circulating synopsis: “Amid stifling warmth and pervasive drought, Isabel, a 17-year-old Ilokana from the agricultural north works on the posh Alabang Nation Membership outdoors Manila, lining up golf balls for highly effective males to drive into the verdant horizon. New to the job, she wanders the stainless grounds sampling its luxuries as members, together with an industrialist and his expatriate niece, the membership president and his pampered spouse, and a slew of Chinese language vacationers, interact in a fancy dance with the membership’s doting and subservient employees. However one thing is rotting beneath the pristine fairways of the elite resort, as Isabel discovers when she tries to return a mislaid golf membership to its patriarchal director, Dr. Palanca. The deeper she journeys into Alabang’s most unique corners, the nearer she will get to the violent truths of the membership, her native Philippines, and her personal previous.”
Because the Sundance programming employees shared in its official information,” by way of a stylized, colourful method lensed with care and precision by cinematographer Xenia Patricia, Manuel takes us right into a world the place violence and management are exerted with the delicate flick of a wrist or tip of a hat. Portray a scathing portrait of sophistication disparities and post-colonial energy constructions in methods which are each quiet and unsettling, ‘Filipiñana’ broadcasts the arrival of an achieved writer-director who unflinchingly confronts his nation’s previous, current, and future.”
“Filipiñana” is presently in search of distributors at Sundance, with Enlarge dealing with gross sales. The film premieres at Sundance on Friday, January 23, although it appears to be like for now like all screenings are bought out till it bows on the net streaming platform.
It’s additionally enjoying the 2026 Berlin Movie Pageant within the views part.
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