Director and writer Martin Edralin talks his history-making SXSW film ‘Islands’ | Interview

Martin Edralin SXSW

Director and writer Martin Edralin talks about his new film Islands, which is premiering in the narrative feature competition at the 2021 Online SXSW Film Festival

As I was perusing the lineup for the 2021 Online SXSW Film Festival one film, in particular, caught my eye. Martin Edralin’s Islands had a logline that immediately captured my attention with one word: Filipino. As a Filipino-American, it was a visceral experience to see my race so unabashedly showcased in a film premiering at a major festival. But that wasn’t even something that director and writer Martin Edralin had thought about.

“It seems like there’s a movement in the US with foreign language right now, so it’s really interesting timing,” he told to me in an interview the week before the film premieres on Tuesday, March 16th.

In our chat, we talked about how Filipino culture shaped the film, how it relates to his great short film Hole, and how it was working with two non-professional actors in the lead roles.

Note: This interview has been edited and condensed.

Martin Edralin, director of Islands, premiering at the 2021 Online SXSW Film Festival. Credit: Karen Tsang

Karl Delossantos (Smash Cut): I watched the film last night and I don’t know if I should thank you for the therapy or charge you for the emotional distress. It was terrific!

Martin Edralin: Oh, thank you!

This is the first film in Tagalog to premiere at SXSW and as a Filipino-American that was great to see. How does it feel to have that distinction?

It feels great! I had no idea. It wasn’t something I even thought about. I think it was after they accepted the film that I looked into it and noticed it. I didn’t even know as a Canadian movie that we could be in the narrative competition. I thought it would be world cinema. It’s really exciting. It seems like there’s a movement in the US with foreign language right now, so it’s really interesting timing.

Yeah, especially coming off the heels of the Minari Golden Globe controversy where it was considered foreign language even though it’s an American film. The Filipino diaspora is at the center of Islands. What about that was interesting for you to explore?

That’s what I lived. Originally this was going to be made in the Philippines. Because of some funding in the development process that I qualified for I had to move it to Canada. And in that process, I realized that yeah I’m Filipino but I don’t actually know what it’s like to live in the Philippines. I visited a few times, but being Filipino in Canada or the US is very different.

And it’s my first Filipino film too so there was an awareness in the process where I really know [the material]. Where in my other films with white characters I was telling stories about humans and emotions I’m familiar with, but for Islands we could really color it with the houses we know and the family relationships. It all feels so natural. Even though I was on set, when I watched the movie for the first time I could smell the food in the scenes.

Joshua (Rogelio Bataglas) calls for help in Martin Edralin’s Islands | Credit: Film still

Watching the opening scene was such a visceral experience for me because it was these artifacts of my childhood that I recognized. The one that really got to me was chopping the whole raw chicken with the cleaver!

Exactly! It’s little things like that. We know those sounds.

The theme of Islands is actually pretty similar to your short film Hole in that it’s about intimacy and someone trying to find it and they’re unable to.

It’s something I didn’t really realize until I was writing it or filming it that it was kind of like a follow-up. [Both films] have lead characters that are past their “prime dating years” and aren’t going to have an experience of love or sex or any real human connection.

Yeah, they’re definitely similar in that way. How did you find Rogelio Balagtas [Josua in Islands]? He and Sheila Lotuaco [Marisol in Islands] are both remarkable.

We went out to the community and we went on Facebook and I emailed every Filipino organization I could find in Canada and eventually we went to the US and the Philippines. We just really had to find the right people. With Rogelio, someone told me about a short that was made in Winnipeg and I saw him in it. He was a dad, it wasn’t the lead role or anything and he barely spoke, but there was something interesting about him.

So we asked him to self-tape and there was still just something about him. So we did a Skype audition, which was super fun because we did a few dialogue scenes but it was really about him doing things without dialogue. So we made him dance in a room by himself and cry into a pillow and pretend to masturbate and we were like wow this is the guy. Because we didn’t want the character to be sad or pathetic. We didn’t want him to masturbate and have it be seen as gross. And he’s just a sweet guy. He’s a nice guy.

Another connection with Hole where sexuality isn’t a taboo and it’s embraced and seen as a part of human life.

Yes! And especially with masturbation with men. It’s always portrayed as something as gross or bad or wrong unlike with women where it’s hypersexualized. I just felt like that’s just what everybody does.

I’m glad you mentioned too that you had Rogelio dance in his audition because I was texting my parents while watching it that line dancing is a plot device, which is so Filipino! Was that a part of the fabric of the film?

I don’t actually remember. I have a feeling that it was during casting when we were looking for senior actors — and they’re always difficult in any ethnicity to find. And I knew there were a lot of these line dancing classes out there — my mom actually goes to one — and there was one in particular that was four-hours long. The first time I went there I was almost moved to tears. It was so beautiful to see all these people that are old and some could barely dance, but they were there and doing this thing together.

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I love that the ability to dance alone is seen as something liberating in the film.

Yeah liberating and thinking of it as pleasure. It’s something we take for granted, the ability to move and to move to music. Thinking about love or sex, it’s just one of those things where it’s joy that needs to be experienced.

I want to talk about Sheila Lotuaco and the watershed scene in the middle of the film where she talks about her experience working abroad as a Filipino expatriate. What was it like shooting that scene?

That scene was made very early. This film was originally about that character, an overseas Filipino worker. It was becoming muddled and felt like two different stories so that script is away in a drawer somewhere. I did a lot of research about the OFW (Overseas Filipino Worker) experience and just read a lot of horror stories about these things happening in the Middle East and I felt like I had to keep that in the movie and say something about it.

I actually thought shooting it was going to be really challenging, but she was a natural. Even in the audition and in rehearsals, she would just cry. Actually both actors when we were rehearsing they would just cry. And I would be like, “you’re not even professional actors!” But they could really just live the experience.

And Sheila is a caregiver [like in the film], she’s a healthcare worker in Canada so it’s a little different than what other OFWs are doing around the world, but it was something important we had to say.

We’ve all been thinking about mortality a lot with the pandemic. How did the entire story of Joshua bearing the burden of taking care of his aging parents come together?

My mom had just retired at the time in 2015 when I had just started thinking about the film, and my dad was on his way to retiring. And you hear these stories about how after someone retires they start to get old really fast from the inactivity or not using their brains in the same way. So I was thinking about that. As you know in Filipino culture we take care of our parents and I have a lot of South Asian friends who also have these multigenerational households where you’re taking care of your parents and they’re taking care of your kids, so I was also thinking about that.

Living a freelance filmmaker life with a busy schedule and whether you’re being paid well one month or paid at all the next month, how do you in this sort of life take care of your parents?

Yeah, it’s a distinction between American and Asian culture. It’s always something in the back of your mind: how do you live your life and also take care of them?

I almost feel guilty thinking about how am I going to do this. In the Philippines it isn’t even a question. It’s just something you do, it’s a part of life.

For an audience that is not familiar with the Filipino experience, what do you want them to take away from the film?

There was never really any intention of putting our culture on display, but we were certainly looking to decorate the film with it — in the production design and including line dancing and religion, how we mourn, our food. It’s all in there. We wanted to show what’s it like to be in a Filipino home.

The film was going to be quite dark. Hole and other shorts I’ve done are slower and there’s almost no levity whereas with Islands there are touches of dry humor and it’s brighter and more colorful overall. But if anyone is going to take anything from it, and I’m going to get a little dark, but we’re all aging and we’re all going to lose everybody in our lives and eventually we’re going to leave. I was thinking a lot about avoiding regret and experience these things whether it’s love or dance. We should just enjoy and experience the things we can while we can and take chances and if you life someone you should just ask them, maybe not if they’re your cousin *laughs* but yeah, just live.

Islands is premiering on Tuesday, March 16th during the 2021 SXSW film festival. Visit sxsw.com to register.

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Karl Delossantos

Hey, I'm Karl, founder and film critic at Smash Cut. I started Smash Cut in 2014 to share my love of movies and give a perspective I haven't yet seen represented. I'm also an editor at The New York Times, a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, and a member of the Online Film Critics Society.