Objects Do Not Randomly Fall From the Sky – Films

Kay Basta Angkarabo Yay Bagay Ibat Ha Langit

Maria Estela Paiso
Philippines | 2024 | 10 min
International Premiere
Languages : Filipino, English
Subtitles : English, French

Special Youth Jury Award for the best Short Film offered by Visions du Réel

Standing on a beach in the Philippines, teenage Sita confesses to her mother that she almost drowned in these waters when she was a child. In turn, her mother admits that though she grew up by the sea, she never learned how to swim. Turning into half-fish, half-human creatures, Sita and her mother swim through their turbulent past.

What our maps call the "South China Sea," Filipinos know as the "West Philippine Sea." A scattering of islands contested by neighbouring nations, each vying to expand fishing rights or secure strategic control over this vital maritime corridor. Since 2012, following a naval operation, the People’s Republic of China has barred access to Scarborough Shoal—waters that were once freely accessible. It is along these now-disputed shores that the film unfolds. Weaving together the intimate exchanges of a mother and daughter with the voices of fishermen whose lives have been upended by the Chinese occupation and the depletion of marine life, the film charts a fragile but defiant territory of resistance. Through patchwork storytelling, stitched from memory, loss, and quiet resilience, it gives visual shape to a struggle for survival and presence. A film teeming with ideas, where poetry and politics intertwine, echoing the fierce refrain of its closing song: “You’re going down, all you colonizers with crooked intentions, we’ll never drown.”

Anne Delseth

Objects Do Not Randomly Fall From the Sky, 2024
It's Raining Frogs Outside, 2021