15/02/2025 - BERLINALE 2025: Liryc Dela Cruz plays with the shadows of exile and memory for a personal and controlled debut feature about Filipino siblings reuniting in Italy

Jenny Llanto Caringal, Tess Magallanes and Benjamin Vasquez Barcellano Jr in Come la notte

Director, screenwriter, director of photography, editor, set designer and producer: the least we can say is that Italy-based Filipino filmmaker Liryc Dela Cruz has invested himself totally into his debut feature film, demonstrating a vast palette of talents with Where the Night Stands Still, presented in the Perspectives section at the 75th Berlinale. In addition, the young filmmaker (he is 33) has also chosen to draw on a story very close to his roots and his exiled status to offer a bewitching film in black and white, fed by the ghosts of the past in an almost atemporal atmosphere where the karma of a family trio is slowly revealed.

For those who don’t know, Filipino immigration in Italy for domestic workers goes back decades (long before the arrival of Eastern Europeans) and Rome’s Filipino community (often fervently Catholic) would come together on sundays, for instance around the lake in the EUR neighbourhood, to keep the memory of their homeland alive, share food typical of their islands and discuss their present in service of the local bourgeoisie.

It is in this spirit yet far from the Italian capital that Where the Night Stands Still takes place, whose frame is a huge building surrounded by an immense park that Lila (Tess Magallanes), to her great surprise, has inherited after more than 35 years working for Mme Patricia, her Italian boss. “We’d become like sisters, like a family”, explains the sexagenarian, who lives alone in the house, to her sister Rosa (Jenny Llanto Caringal) and her brother Manny (Benjamin Vasquez Barcellano Jr), who have come from Rome to pay her a visit for the first time in years. “Big sister, we are your family, too”, Rosa reminds her while Manny trembles under the stupor of the opportunity of this inheritance and the incomprehension of Lila’s refusal to sell in order to finally be able to go back to the Philippines.

Very progressively, through playful walks in the garden, lunches on the autumnal grass and teas in the kitchen, the family visit transforms into a rediscovery of one another, for the door leading up to memories of suffering and sadness from their youth in Mansalay, secrets (“you can’t imagine what I’ve been through”), regrets and resentments (“since we were little, she decides everything for us”, “you destroyed me by bringing me here”) is now open. And although “fights between siblings are normal”, no one really knows what could come out of the shadows…

Made up of about thirty very beautiful static shots (with sophisticated and elegant play on depth of field, shadows and light), the film patiently (a quality that the spectator must also share) shapes a touching existential mirror about the corrosive toxicity of an economic exile on the long term, and which has the airs of modern slavery. In a morbid atmosphere that plays with contrasts, between the luxurious and peaceful comfort of the place and a mysterious, underlying tension, between materialism (the food, the inheritance, health) and mysticism (Christian faith, ghosts), Liryc Dela Cruz directs a story at once simple (the family constellation) and rather unusual (Filipinos in Italy) that, beyond its very solid formal mastery, even has a spectacular final twist in store.

Where the Night Stands Still was produced by Italian outfit Pelircula and co-produced by Ozono, Il Mio Filippino Collective and Reckless Natarjan Pictures. Alpha Violet handles international sales.

(Translated from French)