Now Playing

ABOUT THE FILM

This Sundance prize winner, Special Jury Award for Creative Vision, follows a young "tee girl" at a posh golf club outside Manila, whose wanderings reveal troubling truths about the club, her native Philippines, and her own past.

Amid stifling heat and pervasive drought, Isabel (Jorrybell Agoto), a 17-year-old Ilokana from the rural north, works at a posh country club outside Manila, lining up golf balls for powerful men to drive into the verdant horizon. New to the job, she wanders the immaculate grounds sampling its luxuries as members, including an industrialist and his expatriate niece, the club president and his pampered wife, and a slew of Chinese tourists, engage in a complex dance with the club’s doting and subservient staff. But something is rotting beneath the pristine fairways of the elite resort, as Isabel discovers when she tries to return a mislaid golf club to its patriarchal director, Dr. Palanca (Teroy Guzman). The deeper she journeys into its most exclusive corners, the closer she gets to the violent truths of the club, her native Philippines, and her own past.

Executive produced by Jia Zhangke, this Sundance award-winning debut announces writer-director Rafael Manuel as a major new voice in international cinema.