“When I was growing up, my mum very rarely spoke about her life in the Philippines,” says director James J. Robinson of the inspiration behind this film. “My only impression of her life before moving to Australia was formed exclusively through rare family photos and the music she’d sing out loud in her room.”

Inang Maynila was inspired by the director’s desire to paint a picture of his mother’s childhood in Quezon City and, by extension, for an idea of his heritage. Robinson spoke to his mother’s school friends, visited her former school and church, and stayed in her local neighborhood. “Speaking to these lifelong friends of my hers, I discovered that the story of my mother’s childhood ran much deeper than that of one person,” says the director, who used local actors to recreate the narrated memories of these women.

The interviews in this film not only recall times of cutting class, smoking weed, and cheating on exams but also provides an insight what it was like coming of age under an effective dictatorship. In 1972 President Ferdinand E. Marcos placed the Philippines under martial law after citing threats of communist insurgency. This last grab for power created a trail of human rights abuses that continued into the next decade.

“This film became a meditation on an entire country trying to define its independence under political turmoil,” Robinson continues, “and a generation rebelling against the strict rule they were governed under by their parents, nuns, and politicians.”