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Filipiñana: “It’s just such an important part of why I wanted to make this film: to make the violence of the Global South relatable to Western audiences as well.”
In this vHopeful Conversation, I speak with writer-director-editor Rafael Manuel about Filipiñana, his haunting and visually exquisite debut feature, winner of Sundance’s Special Jury Award for Creative Vision. Set at an exclusive golf club outside Manila, the film follows Isabel, a 17-year-old tee girl whose movement through its manicured grounds reveals a world structured by class, gender, colonial history, and carefully concealed violence. Rafael and I discuss golf courses as emblems of privatized land and globalization; the relationship between beauty and structural violence; the film’s…
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