When I first sat with the trailer for Jun Robles Lana’s “Sisa,” I braced myself for the usual. I expected a dutiful, handsomely mounted “prestige” drama about our colonial suffering. To a Filipino, Sisa is practically a piece of furniture in the national consciousness. She is the woman who launched a thousand high school book reports, a convenient shorthand for trauma that we have long since stopped actually looking at. I expected a film that would simply use the American occupation as a scenic backdrop for a familiar tragedy.
My mistake was assuming Lana wanted to be polite. The relief of being wrong is the most cinematic thing I have felt in quite some time. Lana has essentially committed a high-stakes hijacking of a national ghost.
The film drops us into 1902. This is a year that smells of wet earth and the stagnant rot of an American liberation that looks suspiciously like a firing squad. A nameless woman played by Hilda Koronel wanders out of the treeline. She walks straight toward a guard tower with the terrifying confidence of the dead. She does not speak. She does not even seem to have a past until the village women intervene.
They plead with the American soldiers not to pull the trigger, and she is eventually christened Sisa. It is a name borrowed from the only tragic archetype they know, chosen because this silent, traumatized woman fits the mold of the "madwoman" that has haunted the Filipino psyche for over a century. It is a brutal and casual baptism. They are not being poetic, though. They are just labeling her with the only tragedy they have the vocabulary to describe.
What follows is a claustrophobic study of a concentration camp. It is captured with an oppressive and tactile beauty by cinematographer Carlo C. Mendoza. His camera stalks the village. It lingers on the grit of a civilizing mission where a condescending American teacher and an openly racist commander preside over a microcosm of desperation. The light here feels as heavy as the shadow. It grounds the reign of terror in a physical and sweaty reality that mocks the heroic narratives of our history books.
The film’s entire gravity depends on Koronel. After 13 years away, she returns to the screen to show an entire generation that a single stare can out-act a five-page monologue. She manages to make the act of watching feel like a subversive political movement. While the village around her disintegrates into a mess of desperate choices and moral compromises, Koronel remains a stationary force. She creates a vacuum of stillness that pulls the viewer in, proving that you do not need the histrionics of a stage play to convey the collapse of a soul.
Surrounding this silent center is a cast that seems to be operating in entirely different zip codes of intensity. Every time I see Eugene Domingo on a marquee, I find myself on the lookout for what new trick she can pull out of her sleeve. She is one of our most celebrated icons for a reason. Here, she delivers exactly what is expected. However, there is a palpable sense of restraint in her performance. It is as if she is holding back to avoid upstaging Koronel. It is a noble gesture but entirely unnecessary. With a screen presence of Koronel’s caliber, no amount of acting could ever truly eclipse her.
Then there is Jennica Garcia, who is undeniably talented but suffers from a chronic case of theatricality. The way she delivers her lines feels calibrated for the back row of a theater rather than the intimate, grime-streaked lens of a film. It is a performance that works, but it constantly reminds you that you are watching a scripted event.
However, the real tragedy of the production lies with the actors portraying the Americans. They are, quite frankly, the worst part of the film. Watching them is like watching a group of expats recruited from the nearest dive bar and promised a free meal in exchange for woodenly reciting racist dialogue. They lack the menace required for an occupying force. They appear more like confused tourists than the engineers of a systematic slaughter. Their presence turns what should be a chilling occupation into a series of awkward and unconvincing encounters.
Lana takes a massive gamble by leaning into a perspective that functions as a political middle finger. The film proves that when great actors anchor the center, atmosphere can carry the rest. While the supporting cast occasionally lacks professional polish, that roughness ends up serving the film’s raw, bile-stained energy. This version of Sisa does not care about your comfort or your short attention span. It unfolds like a slow-burning revenge plan, less interested in the spectacle of war than in the psychological rot festering inside the camp.
The film avoids being preachy until the final act. However, looking back, that shift into the didactic feels necessary. In a historical moment where Filipinos were busy betraying each other under the shadow of a new occupier, being preachy is not a flaw. It is a requirement of the truth.
It is a vital and unpleasant miracle that exhumes a national ghost and reminds us that history, like mud, never really washes off.