Filmmaker Paul Greengrass on rage, rebellion and ‘The Uprising’

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or wherever you get your podcast. This is Fresh Air. I'm Tanya Mosley.

My guest today, Director Paul Greengrass, makes films about the choices ordinary people

make when they're trapped inside forces they cannot control. He's taken us to the streets of Dairy as British soldiers opened fire on civil rights marchers in play Sunday, aboard a hijacked plane on September 11th, and United 93, and onto a cargo ship seized by Somali pirates and capped in Phillips. His new film, The Uprising, takes on a story familiar to generations of English school children.

The peasants revolt a 1381. In the film, the play cut the population in half, making workers more valuable than ever, but the ruling class has determined to keep them in their place. When a government imposes a brutal tax to finance its wars, tens of thousands march on London.

Andrew Garfield stars as an unnamed farmer called the plowman.

He's buried his wife and children, and his deep in debt on land that no longer produces a crop. As the revolt gathers around him, his private grief becomes political rage. And in this scene, the radical priest, John Ball, played by Jamie Bell, offers the plowman a new way to understand his suffering.

God, that's taken much from you, God let my feels longer go. Well, he has not left you, it is his plan. The plan. Why would God have a plan to cause such a pain?

“The sickness was his punishment for the crimes of the rich, so why are we suffer also?”

I saw the uprising earlier this summer, and since then, just weeks before the September 10th release, the film has taken on a surprising new frame, the rise of Robin Hood. Paul Greengrass, welcome back to Fresh Air. I'm very nice to be here again. I am very curious about this connection between the peasants' revolt and the story that

we know of Robin Hood. Tell me about it. Well, the film is about the peasants' revolt, which is one of the greatest rebellions in English history in 31, in the middle of the medieval world, and it's from that period that the legend of Robin Hood emerged, and the two are connected because both of them speak

to a bitterly divided world between the rich and the poor, and one of the things that occurred in a Robin Hood was really just a moniker for an outlaw, prior to 1381. But after the peasants' revolt, that was when the ballads and the legend of Robin Hood got going, and became wildly popular in medieval England, because it spoke to people's desires for a better world, a fairer world against the repatious rich.

So in the story of this simple farmer, he eventually becomes an outlaw, and he becomes an outlaw at the time when the Robin Hood legend was getting going, and it got going because of the world that the peasants' revolt took place in. This is a story that you grew up learning as a schoolboy, and it came back up for you, though, during the pandemic.

Correct. Take me to that place where you're thinking about this story coming back up for you. Well, yes, I started writing it in the pandemic. I've been thinking for a while about doing a sort of story rooted in English history, and about sort of resistance and a sort of freedom fighter type film.

And so when the pandemic came, when we were all locked down, it just became natural. What I wanted was to do a story about an ordinary person, a ordinary farmer, caught up in tumultuous events, events that would feel, I think, although it's sat in the medieval world, would feel very familiar to an audience today, because I think in many ways, when you think of the turbulence in our world today, it is driven by these great inequalities

and the rage that people feel about elites and all those things that wherever you are on

“the political spectrum, I think we recognize that that's what's going on in your country”

and mine and Europe and beyond, and it just seemed to me this story really spoke to that.

to cove it in this country and during the plague, I imagine it really isn't it?

It is unimaginable. When you look back, it's only a few years and yet it seems like we haven't really processed

“it properly, but I think that's how it goes, I think these things work in subterranean”

and mysterious ways, and it certainly was the case in medieval Europe. Yeah, take me to that place because, right, we have lost so many people, not so long ago, and these people, these characters in this film are living that same reality. It is after losing an unimaginable amount of people to the plague, and one of the things that really struck me is that how numb they seem to feel, just associated.

And this was the first time the plague came to Europe, you know, literally that we call it an England, it was called the, you know, the death, the great plague. It wiped out, literally half the population, literally, and the same in Europe. And so in the decades after the plague, people were left, as you say, numb, and then

this gathering rage at a system that's seemingly privileged, the rich and the powerful

over the weakened, the defenseless, and, you know, the economy faltered, government didn't seem to work, and in the end, all it was a spark, and then suddenly you had this enormous rebellion. Almost overnight, it was extraordinary, and within days a huge army mob gathering, whatever you want to call them, tens and tens of thousands of people marching on London, and

they marched on London, and they besieged the city, and they got in, and what followed was, it all took place really over five or six days, and that's really the story of the film. The March on London, getting in, the Mayhem, the attempts to fashion a new form of society, a fairer future, all those things, the hopes and dreams of any rebellion, that's a kind of classic movie story, really, and a great adventure, and certainly what I wanted to do

was to, you know, not make a dry history lesson, I want, I like my movies to entertain people, and, and, well, the most spectacle on scale. The movie certainly does that, but it has all the pieces of, like, there's so many parallels to what is happening to us in this moment. Is that for a revolt?

Well, even some elements of that we've seen in, in your recent history, you know, invasions in, in a DC, you know, it's not, I mean, it miles away. The interaction.

“Yeah, I think people, you know, this is not making a political point, what I'm saying”

is that there is a great rage out there, I think, and all of us know it. It's an underlying rage. It is. It is. That country, I'm sure it's there in yours, and, and that some level out governments

seem unable to address it, and that I think is going to be the big challenge going forward. You research a film pretty deeply in ways like an investigative reporter or documentary and does, and I've wondered about the casting, as you say, because we can't know, I mean, it's medieval time. So there's not an autobiography written, but something you have said, when you, when

you cast Tom Hanks in some of your previous films, you've said, you love the every man that he was, the chance that he can be compared to Jimmy Stewart and Henry Fonda.

“What did Andrew Garfield give to this particular character of Plowman?”

The same thing, really, I sort of every man quality, a mixture of strength and vulnerability and emotional kind of quality to him and also, you know, because it's a story of a rebellion, you know, there's tremendous amount of action in it. He has to be able to do a lot, you know, he was fantastic, I really could partner in it. Then there's the king played by Woody Norman.

He's a boy of 14. He's troubled. He's untested. He is a reluctant leader. Maybe not fit to even be one, you know.

He's a child that has been raised to believe that he has been chosen by God and he's surrounded by men who are ruling in his name, okay, so I note about this king. He felt very much to me, like a mix of Michael Jackson and Joffrey from Game of Thrones. There was just, of course, there's just a fragility to him, like how did you conceive him?

Well, the real rich of the second was the boy king.

He was clearly mentally ill. Mental health issues have a profound way, I mean, really profoundly, he was very cruel. But at his core, the problem was that he was brought up to believe that he was the Messiah

14, which meant that he was on the cusp of boyhood and manhood.

He really, in the course of these events, became the dominant figure because it felt a him to deal with this rebellion and the story of the film really is the extent to which he meets that challenge and the way in which he meets it because in the end the true story of Richard is that he became the great tyrant that we know from history. Did you write some of the songs in this?

The lyrics and the lyrics. The lyrics.

“Was it the first time that you wrote lyrics for someone?”

Well, I've done a few, but it's her time in a film. It was fun. I mean, Volk, a bit of a fantastic score and we just, I wanted, of course, it's a part of the story, is the story of the march of the rebel march on London and of course people would have sang songs for sure and they would have been probably religious songs, mixture

of hymns, but also sort of simple folk songs and also protest songs, you know, I mean, if you think of the great movements, you know, I made a film many years ago about bloody Sunday in Northern Ireland, you know, people sang songs on the way, down in that march. That's what you do. They're protest songs and it would have been no different than medieval England.

So we wanted to have that feeling running through it because it's part of the hopes and dreams that lead people to march for change. And music is so such a foundational part of that, but I'm not knowing that you wrote music or you wrote lyrics. Are you a songwriter?

I have the group of friends and we have a little band and we total around a bit. We released a single last year, which was good fun. Seriously. Yeah. Yeah.

What kind of music?

“Well, come of root C, you know, that music, you know, what can I say?”

No, I'm not 20 and I'm a bit older than that, so you know, it's going to be mellow music. Yeah. Oh, we're going to have to find this single. Yeah. Oh, my lord.

But you know, I mean, your films are famous for not really leading people on how to feel like the score does not work in that way. And so I was really fascinated when I saw that you wrote the lyrics here because I feel like you're very intentional in the way you you sound and the way you use score.

You never lead us, you know, how music can elicit the feeling.

It's very, very important. You want people to be drawn into a story and then you've got to have the experience of the movie and then they take from it. What they take from it, you know, you never want to tell people what to think or feel.

“You know, part of the magic of movies, I think, is that relationship that you have between”

the film that you make and what the audience bring and take from it? You know, Paul, rewatching United 93, I mean, it really took me back to that day. And I was trying to find the right ways to articulate this to you. It made me feel innocent again. It took me to the place I felt when it happened.

And when we didn't really know what this all meant and I happened to be watching it with my 19 year old daughter and I looked over at her at a certain point and she was just sobbing

and I saw too and it's the first time and a long time that I've cried about September

11th. Well, it remains a great pivotal event, a great wound. I mean, it was an intense film to make, it was a great privilege to make it, I think, for all of us who took part and the relationships that we made with those families, who lost family members on board, it was the most extraordinary thing, in fact, they're about

to have a screening at the Gettysburg Film Festival and I thought, "I can't be there because I'm here in Los Angeles, but I send to message and there's going to be a lot of family members there and there's some actors who took part." And one of the things I've actually found it incredibly moving, sort of, being taken back to the experience of making it in those relationships with those extraordinary people and

to think for a moment about what was accomplished on board that airplane.

at the Gettysburg Film Festival and that we think of that astonishing address that your president

came from? Yeah. And what he said was, it has fallen to us, he was talking, of course, about the legacy of the Civil War, to fashion, to see if we can meet the test, the challenge. Meet the moment.

Meet the moment. And what I said and believed is that those people on board that airplane, as that plane

closed as it was on the capital building, with no military aircraft insight to stop it.

“It felt that group of people to meet the moment and they did and I think that's inspiring”

and when we think of the problems and divisions, I'm talking about my country, but I'm sure it's true in your country too, of today, 25 years later, and the difficulties we have and the divisions that's out there and the inability for us to come together as well as we all might as societies. I did think at that moment of those people and that coming together in that moment of extremist

on that airplane, facing that situation, unimaginable, they did come together and I think that's inspiring for your country, but for all of us, I think. I actually want to play clip from the film, in this scene, passengers on the plane are coming to understand that the plane has been hijacked by Elkita terrorists and that it is probably not going to land.

“This is the moment when they realize this.”

Let's listen. We are not going to land this plane, they are not going to take us back to the airport. We're going to die, we're going to die, they're flying this into a building, we're not going to die, we're not going to die, there's a lot of us, but we got to do something. Do you see how low we are?

Is there a weapon, is there something we can use? Go back, you go back, store this, listen to me. Are you listening? Go back, and you get angry people, get every weapon you can, get whatever we can use as a weapon.

That was from the film, United 93, directed by my guest today, Paul Greengrass. You went to the families of those on board and you conducted more than 100 interviews before you wrote a word. What did they give you that the official record and their detailed statements could not, because you had those as well, you could have written an entire film based on those.

“I think they gave us two things, one, their encouragement and support, without which we”

would never have made the film, and that support and trust that they gave us that they

didn't need to have done was what really gave wings to that film, gave it the ability to be what it was, and then the second thing they gave us was who the people were on the plane, you know, and they put the group of actors to embody those people, and, you know, it remains, you know, the most, the greatest privilege of my work in life to make that film, and I'm forever in their debt, and I think we all, they're an extraordinary

group of men and women of very different opinions about their society and the world, but brought together by that common shared moment of tragedy, but also of astonishing courage and achievement. Our guest today is Film Director Paul Greengrass, we'll be right back after a short break. I'm Tanya Mosley, and this is Fresh Air.

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this work across all our podcasts within PPR+. Find out more at plus.npr.org. This is Fresh Air, I'm Tony Mosley, and my guest today is a award-winning film director Paul Greengrass, his new film, The Uprising, stars Andrew Garfield, as a farmer who loses his family to the plague, and rises to lead the peasants' revolt of 1381, the rebellion

that helped inspire the legend of Robin Hood. Greengrass is known for putting audiences inside real events as they happen. The streets of Dairy on Bloody Sunday, the hijacked plane on September 11th in United 93, and the cargo ships seized by pirates and captain Phillips. Before he made these films, Greengrass spent a decade documenting conflicts around the world.

Another pivotal moment is a very recent film that you directed in 2025, your film The Lost Bus. Took us back to 2018 to the campfire in Paradise, California, which 85 people died, more than

18,000 buildings burned, and the town of Paradise was basically all about erased.

It remains one of the deadliest wildfires in California history, and I covered that fire. I was there a few days after it happened, and I spent several weeks there, and rewatching your film. I realized how much I had let myself forget, and these are such big events that change who we are, and yet it's so interesting the human condition, how we, a few years past it, we

can completely almost erase it from our minds in a way. Maybe as a coping mechanism to get through it, and your films bring us back to that place, but not in a place where there's an indictment. There's almost like a tap on the shoulder in a way.

“Yes, I suppose, I think it's really important that the films that you make, reward your”

audience for the privilege of giving you two hours of their time, you know, so I don't want to ever make a film for people that is, you know, boring or worthy or giving them a lecture, or anything like that, you want them to have an intense experience in the cinema, a cinematic experience, that's what the movies are about. You can get to a place of hope, I don't think I've ever made a film that doesn't have hope

out of it, that I'm sure of it. I want to talk a little bit about you and growing up, you grew up in public housing, and it's graves. How would you describe it? I was trying to figure out what it was.

No, I grew up, I mean, my father was, was at sea, was what we would call it, much

marina, essentially, he was in the Navy as a young young man in the Second World War and then he went

to the civilian marine fleet, my mother was a teacher, but I would say I grew up in a

“seafaring family, that's what I would say, which is a particular sort of an upbringing because”

it involves solitary men who are very rarely there, because they're a thief and strong women who have to cope on their own, which would be my mother, and that's of course the story of a seafaring family, and for thousands of years, that's the paradigm really of a seafaring family, I think. Your dad, how often was he gone and what it was it like when he came back?

Well, he was away for a very long period of time, six months, could be three months, could be nine months, one time it was 18 months, and then later on he stopped the long trips and started to join, where he became pilot, that would be a day or two or three, and back and you know, because he was really guiding the ships in rather than taking the long trips

And how old were you when that shift happened?

“Yes, I had been about 11, I think, something like 10 or 11, so, you know, quite an important”

time, and that was quite interesting when he came home as it were, because my mother and father had to learn that, had to live together, that was quite entertaining for us children. Right, because your mom had the household, she was doing her thing, yeah, running the household. Yeah, yeah, that was, and so that was pretty tempest just, I can't lie. Oh, and what way would you mean?

Well, solitary man, dominant woman, that's how it is, you know, and they had to, they clashed,

but you know, they got through and they lived a long life, I lost my dad last year, finally

he was very, very honoured, he was very, very old, he was 98, 99, but he, they were together till the end, for a devoted, actually, but it was a marriage of opposites, I would say. Can I repeat something back to you that I've heard you say in an interview, you said directors are made by childhood loneliness and domestic conflict, and you had both. What is the connection to having that type of life in being a director?

I would say that it is a strange thing to end up making films, and I think it is to do with

childhood loneliness, I do, I think childhood loneliness and experiences of cinema too, you know,

I remember as a young boy, my grandmother taking me to the movies and those being very, very profound experiences, you know, seeing snow white as a young young young child, I can still

“remember that. So I think my sense is that if your home is perhaps more conflicted, perhaps”

and it should be in an ideal world, then the movie theatre becomes a place where you can escape and have these very intense solitary experiences in front of a screen, and so I think later if you get to start to pursue the life of a filmmaker, you are sort of drawing on those experiences, those are the profound sort of emotional well-springs that drive you to make films, and one of the things you're trying to achieve, I think, is to try and create cinematically the intensity of the

experiences that you have in front of a screen and a movie theatre when you're very, very young, that would be my feeling. Your grandma took you to see Snow White, but do you remember the movies that just took hold of you as a young child? Oh, a number Snow White, yeah, I remember I will now must have been four or five, but I can remember it absolutely vividly being terrified, absolutely terrified, and of course, and being in love with Snow White, of course, and I can remember

you know, we used to have Saturday and Saturdays, you know, they'd be comedies, you know, I can remember the sound of music still to this day, one of my favourite films, you know, the experiences that you have in a movie theatre are the most precious things that you draw on, really, because somewhere if you can locate the truthfulness of the emotional reactions that

“you have, that's what you're trying to give your audience if you can fashion something that can”

give your audience something of those same feelings, you know? Let's take a short break. If you're just joining us my guest today is Film Director Paul Greengrass, the Academy Award-nominated director of United 93 and Captain Phillips, his new film The Uprising starring Andrew Garfield, tells the story of the peasants' revolt of 1381. We'll be right back. This is Fresh Air. This message comes from the Center for U.S. voters abroad foundation, U.S. citizens live,

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direction that you were going to be? You were going to tell stories like as I know that you had a career

working. Traveling was different. I mean, I think that when I was a teenager I found life quite

“difficult, I think. You were thrown out of two schools? I was, yeah. What did you do?”

I mean, not bad things that I just was not attentive and wasn't really very interested in you know, trying to the bit and just generally was not the right sort of. I found living inside institutions quite hard. You know, I was quite rebellious, I suppose. But when I got a bit older, I was very lucky. I had an art teacher who was a very wonderful man who who really showed me that using my eyes and painting and printmaking and that it was a safe space and it was a place where

I could express. And that's where I made my first film. I was very young. I would have been at 16 or 17.

Oh, what was that film about? It was really a horror film when it was only about 30 seconds long, but I've felt it with the friend of mine. And I just found myself transported, but I wouldn't say I decided then that I'm going to make movies because you'd who thinks like that at 16 or 17. And then I went to college and came out and started working in television and originally made documentaries and and that really I suppose that they're making on me because I kind of

traveled a lot and saw a lot of the world and began to understand what the world was about

“bit more. But I always had a hunger to make movies. It would have been a secret desire, I think,”

because it would have been a bit preposterous to have said it publicly. Obviously. And as a documentary filmmaker, it was a hard transition to make, but I did get there in the end. I want to go back though to your documentary filmmaking because I'm really curious about those experiences and how they have helped shape what you put on screen today because you were in Beirut during the Civil War, South Africa under a part-time Central America in the middle of its wars. You were in your 20s

at this time. You're seeing things that- Particularly young. Yes, but you're seeing things. Northern Ireland during the troubles, yeah. You're during the troubles. You're seeing things. When you think about the time period in your life and your young 20s, is there any one particular moment that really stands out to you that you really come back to thinking about from time to time in the building of your craft? Well, there's a well-to-memories I suppose. I mean, in I've got some

regrets about that period because I was away and I had young children. I didn't really see him because that was what you did in those days and you- these are young men, you're reckless and the job demands that you go off and do those things. So there's that side of things. But in terms of understanding how the world works, you know, the program that I worked on was a prone-core world in action. That was what it was called, the title of which belonged to John Grizzon who's the founder of

documentary film release, sort of the grandfather of it if you want to call it. He had this phrase and it was bought and became a very, very successful television show in the UK and around the world,

“actually. And I think that's what I made. I was trained to make those films about the world”

in action and I like to feel that many years later I'm still making films about the world in action. That sort of sounds tried and I suppose is perhaps, but that is as it seems to me true and when I think of those experiences, you know, I mean things come to mind I can remember being in Beirut.

In the first time that I experienced sort of being in, you know, a war zone as it were.

The first morning we got there, we landed at Juni Port, we had to walk into Beirut at night, which was pretty dangerous, I have to say. And then we got there and we were, I was with a very famous English documentary chemical, George S. E. Turner, a sound man called Phil Taylor and we were standing or actually inside a building when an air raid started and he was George was changing film and those days you were shooting a film with digital and you changed your film

magazines in what they called a day back so you could you could put hands in and you know,

magazine. He was changing a magazine when the raid started and I'd never been and I had

literally chumped down the stairwell literally and emerged when it was over about 10 minutes later looking quite worse for where I had actually peed my trousers, absolutely honest at what happened and when I emerged he was George was still still standing with that hands in the day back trained and they looked to me and they laughed so loudly and they were like where did you go? You don't get about, where is that? I jumped down the stairwell and said no, no, no, no,

“let's sit and listen, if we run that's when you need to really be worried so you've done it”

done it many times yeah so that was the tip if George doesn't run you don't have to worry right so that was one last night but but then ultimately you became the guy that the younger guys had to look to you if you run then it's time I guess so I guess so yeah but there were many many experiences I remember for instance being in the first time I worked in normal island when it was the middle of the hunger strikes and I'm going into the maze prison that was an

extraordinary day and we shot inside the cells there and you saw these cells and on there was a card outside each cell you know it would have the name and it would have the date of birth and I suddenly realized that I was looking at a whole generation of young men of exactly my age you know I would have

“been us both 24 so 24 I think remember when we went in there they were all young men who were”

serving these enormously long sentences for the most horrendous acts of violence but you couldn't go in and see this as a crime wave obviously there's something that happened in this society to create this enormous essentially civil war where people felt that their only option was to go to war and I'm not seeking to justify it you know but but that was the reality and that taught me a very valuable lesson why why do young men take up arms they take up arms because

the rage gets so bad it's better to do that than not to so you know that's always taught me

a lesson I'm from think of that your wife Joanna she produces your films and she has said I

“hope I'm getting this right but she says how you work it's not good for your health but it's good”

for the film so when you were talking about you was a young man and you know you're out there I think it's it is the choice it's so many people who are driven by something they love to do what does she see because it's one of the joys is working together because our kids now are grown up so we can go wherever we want and we can make our movies and you know when when

when we were younger it was always a bigger challenge I had we make sense of it all and you

know deal with that now we don't have that problem so it's all joyful that way and it was an absolutely lovely experience and she's the wisest person so and you know when you get filmmaking is a it's some ways it's a little bit like sports actually professional sports you know I do feel that's I get older you know in the sense that when you cross that line you know when a football player goes out on the field they're not getting around they're going out they're to win

they're gonna leave it all out there and film making is the same that same sense that for all of you in front camera particularly the actors you know you're you're trying to create this collective endeavor where you leave it all out there Paul Greengrass I feel so lucky that I had a chance to talk with you oh it's been great thank you for this conversation thank you for having me director Paul Greengrass was my guest his new film the uprising will be in theaters on September 10th

coming up film critic Justin Chang reviews the new drama Philip Innaena which follows a teenage girl who's just started working at an upscale resort in Manila this is fresh air this message comes from the center for U.S. voters abroad foundation U.S. citizens live travel and serve all over the

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“the new drama Philip Innaena follows a teenage girl who's just started working at an upscale resort”

in Manila it's the first feature from the Filipino writer director Rafael Manuel and it won a special jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year it's now playing and select theaters and our film critic Justin Chang has this review the few weeks or so that stretch between late August and early September are generally thought of as the doldrums of the movie release calendar the summer blockbusters have come and mostly gone and the fall Oscar contenders have yet to drop

yet there are always new films worth seeking out usually flying just under the radar

you might not have heard of the terrific new movie Philip Inna which premiered earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival it's in theaters now and it marks the arrival of a remarkable talent a Filipino writer and director named Rafael Manuel in a way Philip Inna is an ideal thing to watch in a nice cool theater at the end of a brutally hot summer it's been a while since a movie so powerfully captured the sweltering heat of the season or established such a vivid sense of place

from its opening moments it begins on a tour bus making its way through the crowded streets of Manila where a local guy tries to teach the board-looking passengers a few words into golf my boy my boy it's how we go into an other here in the Philippines my boy in English we don't live why don't you guys give it a try it's easy mama oh hi oh boy oh oh my boy

Manila is in the midst of a drought early on Manuel shows us weary residents lining up for water rations and then cuts to a shot of sprinklers irrigating an enormous golf course that's a bluntly effective bit of commentary we have arrived along with that bus full of tourists at an upscale resort a lush green oasis of luxury in one of the most densely populated cities in the world

for the rest of its 100 or so minutes Philip Inna will never leave the resort it's a realistic

yet satirical portrait of life inside a hermetically sealed bubble our guide is a 17-year-old girl named isabel played by the intensely watchful jory bell agotto isabel has just started working at the driving range as a tea girl whose job is to tee up balls for golfers one after another it's a tedious ridiculous task one of many that keep the resort in operation some workers are forced to spend hours waiting in the ponds fishing out errand golf balls it's mostly through isabel's sharp eyes that the

movie's class critique comes into focus we follow her as she wanders this carefully manufactured paradise which is dotted with non-native trees that have been trucked in from afar and meticulously planted isabel has a rebellious streak and she can't help breaking the rules and sampling the resort's amenities whether she's dipping a finger in a guest's strawberry cake taking a shower in a spa

“or simply basking in a few minutes of air conditioned bliss Manuel also introduces us to another key”

character a significantly more privileged young woman named Clara played by Carmen Castellanos Clara who lives in New York is visiting the resort with her uncle who wants her to move back to the

country and fight what he calls brain drain the flight of young Filipinos seeking better opportunities abroad

“but Clara is reluctant probably because like isabel she can see that people are being exploited and”

marginalized in the name of development and progress. Philippine Yana has just a few spare dribbles of plot from time to time we hear ominous whispers of a young girl who's gone missing on the golf course isabel is given a seemingly simple task to return a stray golf club to the president of the resort that becomes a kind of quest with a few disturbing and even devastating revelations along the way

but what distinguishes Manuel's filmmaking is how much of the story conveys visually

through texture and atmosphere framing and blocking he shows us the resort from a seemingly

“infinite number of angles shooting in long takes and seldom moving the camera but the filmmaking never”

feels static every shot of Filipin Yana positively churns with life early on Manuel unleashes a playfully choreographed sequence worthy of the great French director Jacques Taté in which the resort workers perfectly synchronized movements setting a table stacking chairs and cleaning a pool

are brilliantly set to music it's a rich dose of comic fantasy that serves to underscore the

situation's grim reality. Philippine Yana is an impeccable piece of world building that genuinely challenges us to imagine a better world. Justin Chang is a film critic at the New Yorker he reviewed the new film Philippine Yana if you'd like to catch up on interviews you've missed like our conversation with Annie Lowry about the tax all of us pay waiting in line at the DMV on hold with insurance companies and the hours we spend filling out forms for basic services

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fresh air is executive producer is Sam Brigger our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Meyers Roberta Shorak and Marie Boltonado Lauren Crinsle Teresa Madden oneik Nazareth Susan Yacundee and Abalman and Nico Gonzalez Whistler our digital media producer is Molly Cv Nespar they a challenger direct it today show with Terry Gross I'm Tanya Mooseley

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