Celebrated Singaporean producer Jeremy Chua and emerging Philippines talent Rafael Manuel have teamed on “Filipinana,” a selection at the Busan International Film Festival‘s Asian Project Market this year.
The film will follow 17-year-old girl Isabel, who spends her whole day teeing-up balls for golfers at a country club. She feels strangely drawn to club president Dr. Palanca, but as she starts to piece together a more violent picture of what lies behind the club’s pristine facade, she comes to realize that what began as an innocent infatuation is rooted in a more sinister, shared history.
“Filipinana” is based on the short film of the same name that won the Silver Bear for best short at the 2020 Berlinale. The project began life as a feature film script that Manuel wrote when he was at film school in London in 2018. Manuel ultimately decided it would be better to build a profile for the project by doing a short film set in the same universe first.
“Although it may not be the first thing that comes to mind when one thinks of the Philippines, I think that the golf course is a perfect metaphor for my country; it is a very large and fertile plot of land that is worked and toiled on by so many but ultimately enjoyed and profited from by only a select few,” Manuel told PvNew. “With ‘Filipinana,’ I would very much like to convey what it feels like to be Filipino and to have this love/hate relationship with our country which contains so much beauty but also so many problems that we don’t even know where to start picking up the pieces.”
Recent productions for Chua’s company Potocol include “Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell,” which won the Camera d′Or at Cannes earlier this year, “Tomorrow is a Long Time,” which screened at the 2023 Berlinale, “Last Shadow at First Light” that played San Sebastian recently and 2022 Venice winner “Autobiography,” which is Indonesia’s entry for the Oscars this year.
Chua and Manuel, both peripatetic filmmakers, were introduced by their mutual film teacher, Gisli Snaer Erlingsson, met at the 2020 Berlinale and found many common topics including Southeast Asian filmmakers living and working abroad.
“What drew me to Rafael’s short, “Filipinana,” was his ability to express humor through a rhythmic and lyrical construction of absurdities in the most banal and unassuming aspects of life. It is a language that captures modern ennui and existentialism in the growing income gap of a rising Southeast Asia. He conveys this in a tone that allows an audience to laugh first and ponder later,” Chua told PvNew. “This disillusionment is just one reflection of many he wants to convey about the Filipino condition, one that resonates with many parts of the world. Our feature is an expansion of the short in more complex and innovative ways. It looks at the pristine country club as a microcosm of Filipino society where the worlds of privilege and the working class co-exist in two parallel realities. The film’s form is minimally complex, non-classical and most importantly, morbidly humorous, promising to cement Rafael’s signature as a director of the future.”
The project is developed with the U.K.’s Film4 and has participated at severaldevelopmentplatforms including Cinéfondation, Berlinale Talents script Station, Oxbelly Directors and Screenwriters Lab, and the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Initiative. It has previously secured development support from the Film Development Council of the Philippines and recently received major financial support from the Singapore Film Commission. The team is in the process of presenting the project for production financing at Film4 and aims to close financing with Asian and international co-producers at Busan and also meeting with world sales agents and distributors.
The Potocol, Deivós and Epicmedia production has a budget of $1.5 million, of which $600,000 has been raised.
