What if the better life we leave home to find is only another place where we must learn to survive?For generations, Filipinos have been told that leaving home is the first step toward a better life. The province may offer familiarity but limited opportunities; Manila, meanwhile, is imagined as a place where ambition can finally take root. But for Boyet, the central character of “Starfish,” leaving does not mean escaping oppression — it only changes its shape. “Starfish,” a CinePanalo Film Festival short directed by John Clite Apolinar, enters this tension without treating migration as a simple journey from hardship to opportunity.
Instead, it looks at the emotional and social cost of constantly having to adjust. Its world is shaped by the belief that people must endure whatever life gives them, even when endurance only allows the same conditions of power and inequality to continue.A scene from ‘Starfish.’ HandoutPlayed by VR Relosa, Boyet is a sex worker and macho dancer who returns to his province after years in Manila.
His character embodies the struggle between resistance and survival, while Nour Hooshmand’s Pia represents those who remain behind, carrying the weight of family and authority while quietly longing for a different life. Floyd Tena’s Domeng, meanwhile, reflects the traditional and authoritarian forces that sustain power within the home and community.The film’s central concern is not resilience itself, but the way it is demanded from people with very few choices.
Filipinos are often praised for being strong, adaptable,
Filipinos are often praised for being strong, adaptable, and capable of surviving almost anything. Yet this admiration can become another form of neglect when it shifts attention away from the systems that make survival necessary. Workers endure unfair conditions, young people leave home to support their families, and those who struggle are simply told to remain strong.This is where the familiar idea of Manila as a destination for a better life begins to unravel.
The city is often imagined as a place of opportunity, where ambition can overcome the limitations of provincial life. But for many migrants, Manila can also be a trap— one built from expensive living, unstable work, social isolation, and the constant pressure to remain productive. The restrictions of tradition may be replaced by the demands of labor, while freedom becomes conditional on one’s ability to keep adapting.Yet returning home does not necessarily guarantee release.
The province may offer familiarity, but it can also preserve old hierarchies, expectations, and forms of control. This creates the film’s deeper tension: whether one stays or leaves, the pressure to endure remains. Different places may offer different forms of confinement, but the burden is often carried by the same people.Through its exploration of identity, masculinity, and power, “Starfish” reflects how personal choices are shaped by family roles, social expectations, gender, work, and access to power.
Its world is marked by relationships in which
Its world is marked by relationships in which assistance can become debt, loyalty can become submission, and strength can mean remaining silent. These dynamics reveal how oppression survives — not only through obvious violence, but through the expectations people learn to accept.This is the cost of over-resilience: people become so accustomed to surviving that they are no longer allowed to imagine a life beyond survival.
Endurance is celebrated while rest is treated as weakness; adaptation is praised while resistance is dismissed as impractical. By connecting the dream of leaving home with the reality of Manila as a possible trap, Starfish asks whether resilience remains empowering when it becomes the only option.Ultimately, the film invites viewers to reconsider the stories Filipinos tell about strength, success, and home.
Leaving is not always freedom, and returning is not necessarily failure — especially when the places people leave behind were never safe to begin with. Beyond survival, “Starfish” opens space for a more difficult hope: the freedom to choose, to be vulnerable, and to live without treating endless endurance as the price of belonging.Catch “Starfish” in Puregold Cinepanalo’s Set A this September 23 to October 4, 2026 at Gateway Cineplex 18, Trinoma, Fairview Terraces, Feliz, Ayala Malls Circuit, Ayala Malls Manila Bay, and Market!
Market!
