Insiang

1976 / Color / Drama / 95 minutes / Direction: Lino Brocka / Story: Mario O’Hara / Screenplay: Mario O’Hara and Lamberto E. Antonio / Cinematography: Conrado Baltazar / Editing: Augusto Salvador / Production Design: Fiel Zabat / Sound: Rudy Baldovino / Music: Minda Azarcon / Produced by CineManila Corporation / Cast: Hilda Koronel (Insiang), Mona Lisa (Tonya), Ruel Vernal (Dado), Rez Cortez (Bebot), Marlon Ramirez, and the PETA Kalinangan Ensemble

Insiang is the only child of Tonya, a market vendor abandoned by her husband. Mother and daughter live in a slum shanty with the parasitic relatives of Tonya’s husband. When the relatives leave, Tonya takes in a “live-in” partner, Dado, a hoodlum who is also attracted to Insiang. Tonya is jealous of her daughter. Insiang starts to hate Tonya and Dado even more when Dado stops Bebot, her boyfriend, from seeing her.

Dado rapes Insiang, but Tonya believes Dado’s tale that Insiang seduced him. The desperate Insiang asks her boyfriend to run away with her. After she and Bebot make love in a cheap motel, Bebot leaves her. Disillusioned, Insiang returns to her mother who accepts her, but is determined to prevent Insiang from “seducing” Dado again. With revenge in mind, Insiang yields to Dado’s sexual advances, and manipulates him into mauling Bebot in a garbage dump. Meanwhile, Tonya grows more suspicious of her daughter and Dado. At the right time, Insiang reveals her relationship with Dado and leads Tonya to murder Dado.

In the end, Insiang visits Tonya in prison and asks for forgiveness but receives only Tonya’s bitter iciness. Insiang leaves without looking back at Tonya, who peers out of the barred window of her cell, her face full of hate, anger, and pain.

Insiang won Best Actress (Koronel), Best Supporting Actress (Lisa), Best Supporting Actor (Bernal), and Best Cinematography in the 1976 Metro Manila Film Festival; Best Supporting Actress in the 1977 Filipino Academy of Movie Arts and Sciences Awards; and Best Supporting Actor in the 1977 Gawad Urian. Shown in the Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes Film Festival, Insiang earned for Brocka recognition in the international film community. The Manunuri ng Pelikulang Pilipino voted the film as one of the 10 Best Films of the Decade 1970-1979. In 2015, the restored version of Insiang was included in the Classics section of the 68th Cannes Film Festival. The restoration was a joint project between the Film Development Council of the Philippines and Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project/The Film Foundation. In 2002, Insiang was adapted for the stage by O’Hara himself and directed by Chris Millado for Tanghalang Pilipino at the Cultural Center of the Philippines.