Beneath the pristine surface of a country club in the Philippines, a sinister buried truth.
One of the films ready to make a splash out of the Sundance Film Festival‘s 2026 World Cinema Dramatic Competition is first-time writer/director Rafael Manuel’s “Filipiñana.” With a surreal visual language that hat-tips everyone from Jacques Tati to Michael Haneke and the filmmaker’s longtime mentor Jia Zhangke, the film is a striking, startling class critique based on Manuel’s own Silver Bear-winning 2020 short film (which you can watch now on the Criterion Channel, by the way).
IndieWire debuts an exclusive teaser of the film below, an excerpted musical interlude in the movie that gives a sense of reality dislodging from itself at the stately, posh golf course.
Here’s more of the film from its circulating synopsis: “Amid stifling heat and pervasive drought, Isabel, a 17-year-old Ilokana from the rural north works at the posh Alabang Country Club outside Manila, lining up golf balls for powerful men to drive into the verdant horizon. New to the job, she wanders the immaculate grounds sampling its luxuries as members, including an industrialist and his expatriate niece, the club president and his pampered wife, and a slew of Chinese tourists, engage in a complex dance with the club’s doting and subservient staff. But something is rotting beneath the pristine fairways of the elite resort, as Isabel discovers when she tries to return a mislaid golf club to its patriarchal director, Dr. Palanca. The deeper she journeys into Alabang’s most exclusive corners, the closer she gets to the violent truths of the club, her native Philippines, and her own past.”
As the Sundance programming staff shared in its official guide,” through a stylized, colorful approach lensed with care and precision by cinematographer Xenia Patricia, Manuel takes us into a world where violence and control are exerted with the subtle flick of a wrist or tip of a hat. Painting a scathing portrait of class disparities and post-colonial power structures in ways that are both quiet and unsettling, ‘Filipiñana’ announces the arrival of an accomplished writer-director who unflinchingly confronts his country’s past, present, and future.”
“Filipiñana” is currently seeking distributors at Sundance, with Magnify handling sales. The movie premieres at Sundance on Friday, January 23, though it looks for now like all screenings are sold out until it bows on the online streaming platform.
It’s also playing the 2026 Berlin Film Festival in the perspectives section.
