With ‘Royal Blood,’ Bianca Catbagan reimagines Maria Clara

Over a decade ago, Bianca Catbagan was beside herself for having seen for the first time Marie Jamora’s Ang Nawawala at Cinemalaya that it instantly became a blueprint for the stories she would later tell, after earning her film degree at the University of the Philippines in 2010 and completing her MFA in directing and screenwriting at Columbia University in 2018.

“Ang Nawawala changed what I thought an interesting story could be,” she said. “When I first started writing, I assumed films had to be about big events or extraordinary people. I didn’t think to look at my own life.” 

The film, a coming of age of sorts about a privileged young man who has retreated irrecoverably inward such that he only speaks to the ghost of his dead twin brother, hews closely to the Manila music scene she used to be fully wrapped up in.

“Back then, it was just my everyday life. The gigs, the late-night drinking sessions, crushes on bands,” she continued. 

“Seeing them on screen made me realize that my emotional world was enough to be put on screen. Marie Jamora always talks about how films are e-motion pictures, full of feeling. Her work gave me permission to dig into my own life and experiences and to trust that my personal truth can carry a film.”

Now based in Los Angeles, Catbagan follows in the footsteps of Jamora, both mentor and close friend, as only the third Filipino filmmaker in 50 years to be part of the prestigious 2027 cohort of the American Film Institute’s Directing Workshop for Women+. Jamora was the first Filipino to be admitted into the year-long program in 2019.

“It’s a big milestone for me to be part of this program,” Catbagan told me. “Breaking into the film industry in LA is tough, especially as an immigrant. Being selected feels like I’ve stepped into the next phase of my directing or opened a new chapter. It feels like a confirmation that I’ve gone deeper into my work and my voice as a filmmaker.”

Alongside seven other filmmakers, Catbagan will realize her historical drama Royal Blood, which flips the iconicity of José Rizal’s Maria Clara on its head through sapphic lens. A modern romance filtered through an image of the past, the story follows two lovers (played by Elena Heuzé and Sam Morelos) in late 1880s Manila whose relationship grows more erratic upon the arrival of the Rizalian character (played by Marsha Rosales). It is the Filipino director’s third collaboration with the Filipino-French actor Heuzé, who also stars in her forthcoming short film Jump.

Maria Clara is an image of womanhood that’s been both upheld and challenged in Filipino society – this Catbagan knows. But the filmmaker is less “interested in keeping her fixed on that pedestal” than in exploring “what happens when you break that image open.”

“The original Maria Clara is refined, but also built around fragility,” she explained. “She is an idea of femininity that’s composed, restrained, respectful, and even performative in suffering. I wanted to push against that. Through a queer gaze, I’m not discarding her, I’m reimagining her. I’m asking what she becomes when she’s no longer just an ideal of ‘proper’ Filipino femininity, but something more full and complex.”

The film, Catbagan continued, wrestles with what it means to conform in a world built against minorities and outcasts. “In many ways, that was Manila’s strict, Catholic society to me. That was the feeling I had, figuring out who I was, in my parents’ home.”

“I’m interested in what it means to hide behind obedience, to make yourself small in order to survive. Something that echoes the figure of Maria Clara. So the film became a way for me to ask: in the face of erasure, whether personal or historical, how do our deeper desires persist? And what happens when they finally refuse to stay hidden?”

Prior to Royal Blood, Catbagan already had a number shorts under her belt, such as Letters to the Future (2014), Saturno (2018), and Apartment 605 (2023) — her most successful film to date screening at fests the likes of the 2025 Queer East Film Festival and the 2024 LA Asian Pacific Film Festival — as well as the feature Suntok sa Buwan (2012), co-directed by Jose Antonio de Rivera.

Also taking its cue from Stephen Frears’s Dangerous Liaisons (1988) and Roger Kumble’s Cruel Intentions (1999), Royal Blood is written by Catbagan’s frequent collaborator and real-life partner, British Filipino filmmaker Andrea A. Walter, who is now mentored by Lilly Wachowski.

It will be shot in California, with LA stepping in for Old Manila, though Catbagan originally thought of filming it back home, after shopping the project around in Canada, Manila, and LA.

“I even dreamt about it,” she said. “I just woke up to a feeling of certainty that it had to be shot back home.” But the AFI program requires the short to be shot in LA. “Even though it’s an imperfect stand-in for Old Manila, that constraint actually helped make the film real for me.”

At some point, Catbagan even reckoned that putting the project together wouldn’t be possible. “But this was like my film telling me how (or where) it wants to be made. There’s so many resources that the AFI program offers to help us make it, like access to crew and equipment, and post-production support. I do believe in listening to your art and how it wants to come to life.”

In UP, Catbagan was shaped and sharpened by the likes of Nap Jamir, Armi Santiago, and Lyle Sacris. “They were so hard on us, especially Sir Lyle,” she shared. “There was a feeling of learning about the world, how film expands your knowledge beyond yourself, and eventually outside of your own country and worldview.” 

Wherever life takes her, that sensibility remains at the core of her work. “I long for Manila, but I also find that I understand myself more when I’m outside of it, outside the confines of my strict upbringing,” she said. “In some ways, distance has helped me see both the city and myself more clearly.”

College was also around the time when she thought she was going to be a fashion photographer. “I learned to take photos right when DSLRs became widely accessible,” she recalled. “And that really shaped the way I see a frame. I’ve always been drawn to rich, stylish images.”

Years later, her penchant for photography would allow her working behind the scenes of films, fashion shows the likes of the New York Fashion Week and the Philippine Fashion Week, music festivals such as The Governors Ball Music Festival and Life is Beautiful Music Festival, and music videos, including Noches’ “Ugly Boy” and Ciudad’s “Turn Your Eyes.”

“Music videos have been a great space for me to experiment with images because there’s so much freedom in the form,” Catbagan said. “You can mix media, moments don’t have to be linear, and there’s something really exciting about how expressive you can be within the limits of a song.”

Catbagan’s cinema primarily draws focus on the female experience, the politics of sensuality, and how relationships are built and tended. With a refined language at her disposal, she reasserts these themes in Royal Blood, which she also sees as a response to the contradictions of identity politics that queer and diaspora artists like her are almost always expected to answer for, to the point of de-emphasizing the value of their craft. 

“It places queer characters inside what’s a typically heteronormative story on screen: a love triangle. Have we really seen it with three girls? At its core, Royal Blood is still about teenagers feeling jealousy, desire, and heartbreak, something that’s not isolated to the queer experience.” 

Catbagan admits to feeling “some resistance to being framed only through identity.”

“But I also understand my work more deeply because I move through spaces that ask me to examine it that way,” she added. “I enjoy writing queer characters, but I really try to follow where the emotions are.”

“For me, the work often begins with questions like: what does it mean to hide your true self? What does it mean to want something and not be able to say it? Those aren’t questions that belong only to queer people, they’re universal experiences.” – Rappler.com