September 1, 2024 - In the Philippines where abortion is illegal, a young gymnast finds out she’s pregnant just days prior to a national team tryouts. She gets on a jeepney ironically named Gift of God as she seeks illegal abortion drugs.
Such is the premise of Antoinette Jadaone’s film Sunshine, the Philippine entry to this year’s Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) where it will have its world premiere under the TIFF’s Centrepiece Programme. The film tackles topics of teen pregnancy and abortion, both prevalent and taboo at the same time in the Philippines.
A media release notes that in the Philippines, “roughly 1,000 women die yearly because of lack of access to safe abortions, with others going to jail.” Of the abortion issue, Jadaone says, “Sunshine represents the hundreds of thousands of girls who became pregnant in their teens. About 500 Filipino teenagers become mothers every day.”
Jadaone relates interviewing such young women who, caught between the hardships of raising a child and condemnation from a deeply conservative society, “contemplated abortion but decided to continue with their pregnancy,” adding that “The abortion ban may be protecting the unborn, but it’s killing our women too – both literally and figuratively.”
The director, whorose to success through a number of films that met both commercial and critical success, including the widely popular That Thing Called Tadhana in 2014 and her production team collaborated with the Gymnastics Association of the Philippines to ensure that gymnasts and the sport are accurately and fairly represented in the film. The release of Sunshine is timely given the Philippines’ historical win of two Olympic gold medals in men’s gymnastics through Filipino gymnast Carlos Yulo.
For singer/actress Maris Racal who plays the role of teenage gymnast Sunshine, the experience was an eye-opener: “I am grateful to have played this important role especially since abortion is such a sensitive topic in the Philippines. I learned the weight that you carry when you are an athlete, the things that you have to give up and the hours that you have to dedicate to training.”
Bona-03: Nora Aunor’s Bona confronts bit-part actor Gardo (Philip Salvador) in the 1980 Lino Brocka classic Bona. Photo courtesy of TIFF.
Also to be featured at the 49th TIFF is Lino Brocka’s critically acclaimed film Bona which won the jury prize of the 1982 Figueira da Foz International Film Festival. The film also won a best actress award for Nora Aunor at the 1981 Gawad Urian Awards. Aunor was conferred a National Artist of the Philippines in film and broadcast arts in 2022. The film’s free showing is the North American premiere of its 4K restoration.
For information on screening dates and times, go to https://tiff.net/events/sunshine and https://www.tiff.net/events/bona.
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