FILIPIÑANA

Seventeen year old Isabel has left the rural north behind for a job at one of Manila's most exclusive country clubs, lining up golf balls for powerful men amid stifling heat and a drought that's drying up everything else in the country. Between shifts, she drifts through the club's manicured grounds, sampling luxuries she'll never own, watching industrialists and expatriates and pampered wives move through their private paradise. But when Isabel tries to return a misplaced golf club to the club's patriarchal director, Dr. Palanca, she finds herself drawn into something far darker than a simple errand.

What begins as quiet fascination becomes a descent into buried violence, one that implicates the club, the country, and Isabel's own past. Winner of the Special Jury Award for Creative Vision at Sundance 2026, first time writer director Rafael Manuel (executive produced by Jia Zhangke) expands his Silver Bear winning short into a hypnotic, surreal class satire that turns a golf course into a microcosm of colonialism, privilege, and rot beneath the surface. Equal parts gorgeous and unsettling, FILIPIÑANA announces a bold new voice in world cinema.