The Philippines has selected Rafael Manuel’s Filipiñana, a formally striking class satire set within the confines of a swanky Manila-area golf club, as its submission for best international feature at the 99th Academy Awards.
Manuel’s feature directing debut, Filipiñana was well received on the international festival circuit before landing in the Oscars race. The film world premiered in Sundance’s world cinema competition in January, where it won the Special Jury Award for Creative Vision. It later made its European premiere in the Berlinale’s section for debut features, where it earned strong reviews.
The film follows Isabel (Jorrybell Agoto), a 17-year-old from the rural north of the Philippines who takes a job as a “tee girl” at an exclusive country club outside Manila, placing golf balls for wealthy men as they practice their swings. Her fascination with the club’s patriarchal president, Dr. Palanca (Teroy Guzman), gradually draws her deeper into its hidden spaces, where the immaculate surroundings give way to buried violence connected to both the country’s past and her own suppressed memories.
Manuel uses a shimmering golf course as a self-contained portrait of the Philippines’ entrenched hierarchies of class, labor and colonial power. “They’re very rich spaces to explore the many problems that plague my country, rooted in very imbalanced social structures,” he told The Hollywood Reporter ahead of the film’s Berlin premiere in February.
The feature grew out of Manuel’s 2020 short film of the same name, which also centered on the social dynamics of a Philippine golf course and won the Silver Bear Jury Prize at the Berlinale. Acclaimed Chinese auteur Jia Zhangke, who previously mentored Manuel through the Rolex Arts Initiative, serves as an executive producer on the project.
The film is already in the midst of a North American theatrical release through Kino Lorber, which opened it at New York’s Film Forum on Aug. 28 and is rolling it out across the U.S. this fall.
The Philippines has been submitting films to the international feature category for decades but has yet to land on the Oscar shortlist or secure a nomination.
The Academy will announce the 15-film international feature shortlist on Dec. 15, with nominations following Jan. 21. The 99th Academy Awards will take place March 14, 2027.
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