Contemplative as a Carmelite convent, FIRST LIGHT is a meditation on the vexing question, how can the gracious core ethics of a religion be warped into rousing support for things that are very inherently unethical?
Sister Yolanda has spent her life as a servant to God and the people in her community. Working as a nurse at the local hospital and living at an old convent in the mountains, Yolanda’s grace and selflessness make her a quiet but valued figure in her town.
Exalted by the working class, exploited by the rich and the Church she serves, Yolanda is devout and seemingly without doubt. But when Yolanda is called to perform last rites on a young construction worker on his deathbed, suddenly things aren’t so simple. The unusual circumstances surrounding the boy’s death, the silencing of surgeons, the behaviour of the police, and the absence of post mortem pastoral care begin to weigh on her conscience.
Swept up in the lives of the people around her, including a young novice nun Sister Arlene, the affluent Linda Dela Cruz, and the father of the construction worker, an unavoidable question in the back of Yolanda’s mind begins to resonate louder and louder: Has she spent her life dutiful to a corrupt and despicable ideal?
Sister Yolanda is religious idealism incarnate; she is grace and spirituality, but she’s exhausted and worn down by institutions and power structures. FIRST LIGHT is a metaphorical tale more than a metaphysical one.
The convent the nuns live in is in decay, built by the colonising Spanish centuries ago. The electricity and plumbing is shot and the local diocesan priest doesn’t want to spend money for the comfort of the women who bring so much comfort the parish.
Metaphor indeed for the predominantly Catholic Philippines run by plutocrats and dictators, oligarchs and oppressors like Marcos and Duterte.
Ruby Ruiz as Sister Yolanda is mesmerising in her stillness and serenity, a slow simmering performance of conscience, conflict and crisis of faith.
Shot by the not of the afraid of the dark cinematographer Amy Dellar, FIRST LIGHT is the feature length directorial debut of writer director James J Robinson who enters the future with a memory of the past and contemplates the bridge between the human and the eternal.
