It’s rare for a film as good as First Light to slip through the cracks of the major festivals. This debut feature from Filipino-Australian director James J. Robinson premiered at the Melbourne Film Festival last August before traveling to Marrakech in December and IFFR last week. The story begins in earnest, following an elderly nun (a lovely performance from Ruby Ruiz, a Brilliante Mendoza regular) as she goes about her daily errands, but soon shifts into the lower gears of a crime story after a construction worker loses his life. The colors are as rich as the characters’ moral concerns, but the overarching feeling you’re left with is one of benevolent calm. As directorial debuts go, it is a remarkably assured piece of filmmaking.
It’s interesting to have encountered this film in Rotterdam this year, where just a couple of nights earlier Lav Diaz’s Magellan had played to a sold-out crowd. The promotion for that film, which stars Gael García Bernal and was shot by Albert Serra’s cinematographer, Artur Tort, has seen Diaz (Robinson’s countryman) receive his biggest release yet. First Light isn’t slow cinema in the classic sense, but like Magellan, it offers an effective mix of narrative thrust and tranquil downtime—that soothing level of brain-engagement you get from Diaz’s work, or from listening to ambient music or white noise. I can pay it no higher compliment.
Much of this is due to the hushed lighting and sound (specifically the steady flow of the Tagalog language), but also Ruiz’s wonderfully open and expressive face. The actress plays Sister Yolanda, a senior nun living her Autumn years in a seminary in the Philippine mountains. Her days involve traveling around the local farms and villages, where she keeps up with her parishioners. On one of these errands, she’s confronted with the construction site accident, at which point the father of the injured worker comes into the story’s foreground, as do the wealthy family who employed him, which includes (notably) Linda Dela Cruz (Maricel Soriano), the family’s matriarch. After administering the young man’s last rites, Sister Yolanda witnesses something that triggers a crisis of faith in her. This uncertainty is soon reflected in a supplementary plot-line, which focuses on the relationship between her and a younger nun Sister Arlene (Kare Adea), whom she has been asked to take under her wing.
Watching all this play out, the mind wanders to Meryl Streep’s character in Doubt, but we’re far away from the autumnal Bronx setting of that movie. Robinson, who previously worked as a DP, captures the lovely vistas of Yolanda’s world (a candlelit evening in the cloister here, a rickety ride on the local bus there) with a level of naturalism that helps to undercut the images’ delicacy—making them feel lived-in and tactile as a result. It helps that the director includes a few lightly bustling scenes and outdoor eateries to the mix—either one of which, if seen in the colder months of the year, will leave you pining for the easy pleasures of summertime.
For all that, First Light (perhaps reassuringly) is not without flaws: an opera singer’s performance in the final third is one of a few instances in which Robinson gilds the lily a bit too much; and it’s always a little galling to see younger artists use their work to meditate on mortality this much—but when a debut film offers you a world this vibrant and fully realized, those kinds of things are easily forgiven and usually, when it comes to subsequent work, quickly iron out.
First Light premiered at the 2026 International Film Festival Rotterdam.
The post Rotterdam Review: First Light is a Calm, Confident Debut first appeared on The Film Stage.
from The Film Stage https://ift.tt/M0AIwpx
0 Comments