The Philippines has its official entry for the 99th Academy Awards, and it’s the film that closed Cinemalaya three weeks ago.

Rafael Manuel’s Filipiñana was named the Philippines’ submission to the Best International Feature Film category — the category through which countries each submit one non-English-language film for Oscar consideration — the Film Academy of the Philippines (FAP) announced Sunday, September 13. A National Selection Committee picked it from a shortlist of eight films.

Viewers who caught it as the closing film of this year’s Cinemalaya had already seen the version of this film that made its case internationally, before a single Oscar committee weighed in.

A Résumé Built Overseas First

Filipiñana is Manuel’s feature debut, expanded from his own 2020 short of the same name, which won the Silver Bear Jury Prize at the Berlinale — the Berlin International Film Festival, one of world cinema’s three major annual festivals alongside Cannes and Venice. The feature premiered at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival in January, where it won the World Cinema Dramatic Special Jury Award for Creative Vision, one of that festival’s most competitive sections. It then played Berlinale’s Perspectives program, followed by San Francisco, Sydney, and Karlovy Vary, before a Kino Lorber theatrical release opened in New York on August 28 — a week after its Philippine theatrical run began.

The film follows Isabel (Jorrybell Agoto), a 17-year-old tee girl at an elite Manila-adjacent country club, whose fascination with the club’s president exposes the class lines dividing who’s served and who serves. Agoto isn’t new to Cinemalaya, either — she appeared in two of the festival’s 2023 competition entries, Tether and When This Is All Over, before this one.

What It Beat

The shortlist included Jade Castro’s All the Things I Leave You (Patawid), Carl Joseph Papa’s 58th, Sigrid Andrea Bernardo’s I’mPerfect, Raymond Red’s Manila’s Finest, Jerrold Tarog’s Quezon, Lawrence Fajardo’s Silenced Nights, and Jun Robles Lana’s Sisa.

Quezon going in was the shortlist’s biggest domestic name — Jerrold Tarog’s third “Bayaniverse” film, starring Jericho Rosales as the Commonwealth-era president. It’s also, right now, the film dominating the Philippine awards conversation: it led the 49th Gawad Urian nominations with 10 nods this month, and Rosales just won Best Actor for the role at the Manila International Film Festival (MIFF) in Los Angeles. None of that weighed in its favor with the National Selection Committee. Filipiñana, which hadn’t picked up a single local trophy before September 13, got the slot instead — a reminder that the Oscar committee and the Philippines’ own critics aren’t necessarily scoring the same thing.

The Streak Still Standing

Across more than three decades of submissions, no Philippine film has ever been nominated or made the shortlist for Best International Feature Film. Last year’s entry, Lav Diaz’s Magellan, is usually cited as the closest the country has come, and it arrived with real international standing — but at home, the film was shut out of Best Film and Best Director at this year’s Gawad Urian, picking up only three nominations in the craft categories. Filipiñana now carries the same weight the Philippines has been trying to put down for years, along with government backing behind it: the FAP has committed to supporting a wider For Your Consideration campaign, including pushes in Cinematography and Production Design.

The Same Race, a Second Filipino-Language Film

Filipiñana isn’t the only Filipino-language film in this year’s Best International Feature Film field. Australia’s own submission is one too. First Light, the feature debut of Filipino-Australian director James J. Robinson, was picked as Australia’s entry just two days earlier. It’s led by veteran Filipino actress Ruby Ruiz, fresh off a record fourth Balanghai win at Cinemalaya for Status: Rejected, and it’s the first Filipino-language film Australia has ever submitted in the category’s history.

Two countries have now entered Filipino-language films into the same Oscar race in the same week — an unusual overlap for a language that’s rarely had more than one entry in play at once.

What Happens Next

Kino Lorber chairman and CEO Richard Lorber, who’s distributing Filipiñana in the U.S., said seeing it at Sundance convinced him it was “nothing short of a cinematic miracle.” The Academy’s shortlist for the International Feature category typically narrows in December, with nominations announced in January — so the wait to see whether Filipiñana finally breaks the Philippines’ streak runs into next year.

For now, the film that closed Cinemalaya with a ticketed screening at Shangri-La Plaza is the one carrying the country’s Oscar campaign.