Clever and ingenious film that imitates the style of early Filipino cinema: shot in the studio with painted sets as background, in black-and-white and beautifully melodramatic. Ideally suited to tell the story of the American occupation of the Philippines in the early twentieth century.
As a CineMart project during the 2007 IFFR, Independencia was given a Prince Claus Fund Film Grant and during its further development, it received support from the Hubert Bals Fund. The result is an extraordinary film that was selected in Cannes for the programme section Un Certain Regard.
In Independencia, Raya Martin returns to the early twentieth century, when the Americans attack the Philippines. The film tells the story of a mother and son who fled into the mountains to avoid being harassed by the American soldiers.
Martin made the film in the style of the early Filipino cinema: clearly shot in the studio, with painted sets and in black-and-white. And very melodramatic. In Martin's clever, ingenious film, the Americans are the bad guys, the occupiers against whom the Filipinos are fighting.