Finding roots and family in a distant community: we interviewed director Liryc Dela Cruz at the 75th Berlinale.
32-year-old Liryc Dela Cruz, originally from the Philippines, now lives in Rome, Italy, and has a distinct way of telling a story. It is also part of his life that he has led so far, thus making his film Come la Notte (Where the Night Stands Still) a memorable film. This film, through the story of three siblings, brings to the fore their grievances, happiness, and long-lost memories all in one night.
Dela Cruz feels that it is very important for a young person, especially coming from the far-flung regions of the Philippines, where there’s not so much access to development, to funding, to explore opportunities and do more for ourselves. “In the Philippines, I was working as a filmmaker, also as an artist, and then, of course, when you’re young, you want to decide where to go and what to do. I wanted to explore cinema and develop filmmaking along with other life experiences, hence I thought of going out of my country. I was 26 then.
While in the Philippines, I used to work with director Lav Diaz, who inspired me a lot. It was he who told me not to be afraid and to take risks. So, I think it’s very important,” said Dela Cruz.
To trace back a bit of history of the Filipinos in Italy, one must understand that they were colonized by Spain for more than 300 years. But why are there so many Filipinos in Italy? It is a frequently asked question, and Dela Cruz explained that the biggest Filipino diaspora in Europe is in Italy.
“The Catholic Church played a role in connecting Filipino workers with opportunities in Europe, particularly in Italy. Italian families, especially those with strong Catholic ties, often hired Filipino women as domestic workers. This led to a pattern of chain migration, allowing workers to later bring their families. Initially, it was difficult due to ongoing issues of racism in Italy. However, since Italians also deeply value family, once a worker was accepted, they were often treated as part of the household. The Church acted as a bridge, facilitating a kind of matchmaking between Catholic Filipino women seeking work and wealthy Italian families in need of domestic and care workers,” he further added.
“Once accepted, Filipino workers were made to feel like part of the family. Yet, this inclusion came with both an obligation and a burden, it was as if their roles and identities had already been predefined, leaving little room for deviation,” Dela Cruz noted.
The director also highlighted the stereotypes that persist despite integration. “But due to racist and stereotypical ways of identifying people, they create this identity that limits the possibility for a person of what they can do. Because they see you as how you look. If you still don’t have the whiteness associated with being from their country, you are still a bit of an outsider. I remember one of the first experiences that I had, and I was the only person of colour there. And a guy gave me the plate. Because he thought that I was one of the workers.”
To tell his story of the reuniting of the three siblings, Dela Cruz chose the medium of black-and-white film. “It was a choice to have this more connection to the character, which, for me, blurs the line between fiction and non-fiction. Also because the story gives a lot of familiarity about our personal lives, about the lives of the characters, for example. That’s why this conscious thing to make it black and white is to create a direct connection between the audience and the images, allowing them to simply witness the story unfold.”
He was inspired to look at this story through the Filipino collective of workers, where he also does cleaning work. Mio Filippino Collective is a collective of Filipino domestic and care workers, artists, community organizers, and members of the diaspora based in Italy. Their mission is to collaborate, co-create, and co-imagine with people and groups who are dedicated to fostering communities of resistance, care, and hospitality; environments where transformation, new imaginations, and self-determination flourish. Their work and research are deeply anchored in the values of care, hospitality, anti-racist, anti-colonial resistance, and decolonial practices.
Through their flagship project, Il Mio Filippino, they highlight the effects of racial capitalism, colonial borders, and the militarized control of bodies, minds, and communities.
“It is growing because even second and third-generation Filipino Italians are approaching us. It is something that is what we heard from the community, what we experienced as a person, and some familiar family experiences that we have. So, here you see that she inherits a house. Is it a big thing when you inherit something like this from an Italian? How does it change the whole perspective for you? I think it talks about the change of… Because you cannot talk about the community of migrants if you don’t talk about class. Because the idea of class is very important. You cannot just say that we are all Filipinos, and we are all racialized. If you change your class still in a territory, how people will treat you will also change. So this idea of luck, of inheriting a villa, is something that is momentous for a person in a territory that just identifies him as a nobody, as an invisible worker. Now that you have the villa, now that you have all the possibilities to be different, to be somebody else.”
He adds that this villa was used as a device to talk about the class struggle, but also to question the sense of belonging. It is still a bubble. It is like a microcosm of the territory, showing the most intimate part of the territory, which is the family.
The house played a vital part in the story. “I fell in love with the house when I arrived there. I studied the light in this very special house, using its beauty to evoke images of alienation and loneliness.” He stressed that because now that you have this house, the way for you to emancipate is always questionable. “Can I go back to the Philippines to take a rest? No, because I still have to take care of the villa. So, it’s still this way of giving her a responsibility even though the person is not there anymore. But you still see that there is her character there talking to the ghost. But you can see also how she was so tied up to the person who, like a god-like person, lifted her character because she was always saying that she’s thankful to the señor, to the madam. But then it is also something that we can talk about how slavery is also potent in that kind of thing because her character is something that cannot really escape.”
“One is, you can make out the greed, the avarice, not getting anything enough, not being good for anything. So that was very interesting for me. I think it’s very important to have a reunion, to see this reunion as something that can make us understand how migration has stolen time from these people, preventing them from reconnecting.”
“You question the concept of a family, and you question also how really the territory is shaping them. These distances, they always reconnect about their past. I am a product also of a lot of mistakes, of a lot of troubles when I was young. And I try to make it by myself to do something in the present. Because if you will look at the future, the future might not happen tomorrow.”
“As with any relationship, especially one with a dysfunctional history, we must sometimes question how the present shapes our chances and opportunities. The present, I think, what we forget in the recent memory as human beings, that’s why we are very detached in the idea of what is happening today right now to us is also we are always looking at the future. We forget how to be in the present, even though it offers us the chance to correct past mistakes.”
Film Fest Report is an accredited media at the 75th Berlin International Film Festival.
