Lanaya (Bipolaroid Film Organization Inc., CMB Films, 2026) opens unassumingly. A man is driving a worn-out blue Civic. The road is desolate and in an isolated warehouse nearby lies a human corpse. It’s bizarre and chilling, but it sets the narrative and thematic tone superbly. Jun Nayra as Jerry shows quiet intensity, hiding emotions and reactions from other characters while letting viewers see his underlying nature. Throughout the film, Nayra believably presents a calm outer image while subtlety revealing inner turmoil. It is a disquieting feeling that becomes more prevalent with the reveal of a midpoint narrative shift involving Aurora Ramirez (Madeleine Nicolas). If the film’s intention is to look back, then it does so with as much urgency as its characters, a choice that enhances its idiosyncratic tone. Lanaya unspools some visceral and propulsive thrills like a chess game while maintaining a sense of intrigue surrounding the central mystery, aided by its offbeat ambitions and stylistic flourishes. Nursing student, Kaloy (Shaun Salvador) goes undercover, but not as a spy. He resembles a spy by providing information to Jerry. Kaloy is merely a spy of secrecy out of necessity. Salvador's performance is formidable. He offers Kaloy as thoughtful, wounded, calculating and deeply human. Salvador gives us a young man navigating moral compromise and existential dread. You feel Kaloy's paranoia through every frame, exhausted with no choice but to keep going, impeccably easy to root for. Each new player is so sharply rendered that they could be the protagonist of their own movie. Nicolas captivates as Aurora. Her performance is internal but volcanic shaped by restraint rather than grand gestures. Rolando Inocencio’s defensive wariness speaks volumes. Ever a man on a tightrope, Garret evaluates the relative safety or potential danger level of each situation.
Lanaya is consistently less interested in action than consequence and less interested in scene than scenery. The deliberate restraining of action until the final act may put some off. Yet these are small chips in an otherwise tightly woven tapestry of craftsmanship and thematic richness. It’s an alternate narrative track that suddenly frames Kaloy’s story as something larger, more willing to puncture the spells of anxiety that it’s cast. Even when a major plot thread is abruptly resolved, the move pays off in a coda so sly that you almost don’t hear the sound of hearts cracking. What initially seems like a series of cryptic aside soon turns into a bigger-picture revelation about what writer-director Clyde Capistrano has been chasing all along: the passage of time and how it never really heals all wounds. But it is a point that bears repeating, especially when echoed in a movie as graceful and gratifying as this one. Wrangling together this many moving parts is no easy task. Yet watching Capistrano succeed is nothing short of fascinating. He works with an unhurried assurance, following his own set of rules at every narrative turn. At no point does he or his movie seem bound by formula or expectation. It brings a certain freedom to his filmmaking and storytelling. Thrillers often spend their whole runtime building tension for a dramatic payoff. The power of resistance is not always measured in success, but through the human heart’s refusal to bow down to tyranny. With Lanaya, Capistrano exhumes the past as the basis for a purely fictional story and in doing so articulates how fiction can be even more valuable as a vehicle for truth than it is as a tool for covering up. What ultimately elevates Lanaya is its refusal to simplify. It’s expansive, sometimes unwieldy and deliberately dense, but always purposeful. Capistrano understands that authoritarianism thrives in complexity, confusion and fear and his film mirrors that reality with confidence and clarity.
Written and Directed By: Clyde Capsitrano
Director of Photography: Nap Jamir II
Production Designer: Melvin Lacerna
Music Composer: Kara Gravides
Editor: Jordan Arabejo
