Kino Lorber has acquired North American rights to Rafael Manuel’s debut feature Filipiñana, the formally ambitious class satire that recently took home the special jury award for creative vision from Sundance.
The deal, negotiated by Kino Lorber’s Karoliina Dwyer and Austin Kennedy of Magnify, arrives shortly before the film’s European premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival. The distributor says it’s planning a theatrical release later this year, followed by digital and home entertainment rollouts.
Executive produced by leading Chinese auteur Jia Zhangke — who mentored Manuel before and during the film’s making — Filipiñana expands the Philippine director’s 2021 short of the same name into a feature set almost entirely within the manicured confines of an elite country club outside Manila. There, amid drought-stricken heat, 17-year-old Isabel (Jorrybell Agoto) works as a “tee-girl,” placing golf balls at the feet of wealthy businessmen and foreign tourists practicing their drives.
As The Hollywood Reporter noted in its Sundance review, the film “slowly and cinematically builds into a scathing account of inequality, showing how women like Isabel are condemned to work in a place whose atmosphere is closer to that of a colonial plantation than a cushy country club.”
Written, directed, produced and edited by Manuel, who is based between Amsterdam, London and Manila, the film stars Agoto alongside Carmen Castellanos, Teroy Guzman, Carlitos Siguion-Reyna, Isabel Sicat and Nour Hooshmand.
Manuel became a protégé of Jia under the Rolex Arts Initiative and previously won a Silver Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival for his short-form work.
Filipiñana is an international coproduction developed and co-financed by the U.K.’s Film4, bringing together partners across multiple territories, including Potocol (Philippines), Ossian International (U.K.), Epicmedia (Philippines), Easy Riders Films (France) and Idle Eye (Netherlands). Producers on the film include Jeremy Chua, Alex Polunin, Bianca Balbuena, Bradley Liew and Manuel, with co-producers Sam Chua Weishi, Nadia Turincev and Omar El Kadi, and executive producers including Farhana Bhula for Film4 and Jia Zhangke.
