Raging Grace, the award-winning feature film by Filipino-British director Paris Zarcilla, is being shown in selected cinemas today, 29 December. It is the first Filipino-British film produced in the UK.
Described by Variety as “a first-rate suspenser with a sociopolitical soul,” the film revolves around Joy, an undocumented Filipina cleaner and her young daughter Grace. Joy lands a job as a carer for a wealthy terminally ill old man, securing a better life for her and her daughter. But a dark discovery threatens to destroy everything she’s strived for and holds dear.
The film won the coveted Grand Jury Prizes for Best Film and Best Debut at SXSW 2023. It also won The Critics Prize, The Audience Award and The Youth Best Film Award at the Neufchâtel International Fantastic Film Festival.
Delving on Filipinos’ migrant experience, racism and Britain’s colonial legacy, Raging Gace’s UK release comes in the wake of the UK government’s new immigration policies and the lack of East and Southeast Asian representation in the British film industry.
In the last 10 years, less than 1 percent of films released in the UK were made by directors of East and Southeast Asian (ESEA) heritage. Similarly, only 1.7 percent of films had ESEA actors. The findings were based on a report written by Chi Thai and Delphine Lievens.
Raging Grace is a deeply personal project for Zarcilla who draws from his experience as a second-generation Filipino immigrant in the UK. He reveals that it is a creative expression of his own rage about the rise of anti-ESEA aggression during Covid and the UK government’s anti-immigration policies.
“I thought back to the days when I had to accompany my mother when she used to clean houses for upper class family homes and was exposed to the racist micro aggressions of her employers. I was feeling a rage that I had never given myself permission to express. The anger felt dangerous and I needed to put that in a place I could express safely and that was the beginning of Raging Grace,” he said in an interview.
Immigrants and children of the diaspora have come to learn that assimilation is survival and refusing can threaten our livelihoods, our ability to succeed, our very existence…The willful rejection of your very being just to survive is a horror to me.
In choosing gothic horror to explore the story of Filipino immigrants in Britain, Zarcilla explains: “Immigrants and children of the diaspora have come to learn that assimilation is survival and refusing can threaten our livelihoods, our ability to succeed, our very existence. Assimilation for many has meant having to reject their heritage, their culture and mother tongues just to fit in. The willful rejection of your very being just to survive is a horror to me.
According to film producer Chi Thai, “Raging Grace has been a film made on the margins of the UK industry.” It was produced without any public funding and rejected by sales agents in the UK. Despite these obstacles, the film went on to win top prizes in the international film festival circuit and received great reviews.
Zarcilla’s next project is called Domestic, a heist film about a young Filipino couple who run a cafe in 90s London but on the weekends, set up covert rescue missions to help domestic workers escape their abusive employers.
