Filipiñana

Seventeen-year-old Isabel takes a job at an exclusive golf club near Manila. Her role is to hand golf balls to its influential players, who behave as though the land – and the Philippines itself – belongs to them alone. Safely insulated from the country’s harsher social realities, the club’s corrupt members live by rules of their own. In Rafael Manuel’s distinctive feature debut, the club’s power dynamics mirror those of the Philippine state, while the golf course’s immaculate greens become a stage for a satire of capitalism and privilege. As Isabel learns more about the past of the club and its president, the postcolonial power structures hidden from the Filipino public gradually come into view. Filipiñana won the World Cinema Dramatic Special Jury Award for Creative Vision at the Sundance Film Festival.