In his debut feature, James J Robinson illuminates his evolving relationship with faith and Filipino identity

Australia Broadcast Center

a day ago

In the wake of a construction accident, a young boy is left to bleed out on an operating table. The last face he sees is that of an anxious nun, Sister Yolanda (Ruby Ruiz, Expats), who attempts in vain to assuage the child's despair.
His final moments are spent pleading in terror: "Am I going to hell?"
What follows in First Light — the debut feature of writer and director James J Robinson, currently screening in competition at the Melbourne International Film Festival — is a quietly incendiary inquiry into faith and corruption, coiling across the mountains of northern Luzon, the largest island in the Philippines.
"I've been through parts of my relationship with Catholicism, where it's been fury and fire," Robinson says.
"But the majority of the experience has been a lot internal reckoning and decolonising parts of myself, recognising the parts of myself that are [shaped] by living on stolen land."
In 2022, Robinson began working on the script for First Light, driven by a desire to connect with his mother's Tagalog roots. The decision to film overseas was non-negotiable, even if a Filipino story about nuns "is not something that distributors are necessarily looking for", he frankly admits.
"The Philippines is my homeland — my understanding of Catholicism is very Filipino — but I also grew up in Australia. What gives me the right to tell this story? That's a question that I had since day one of writing," Robinson says, aware of the limits of his own authorship.
Growing up in Australia, he recalls how assimilation became an act of self-preservation for his family. After facing discrimination for her accent by her exclusively white schoolmates, Robinson's mother declined to teach her children Tagalog, severing a lingual connection to his heritage.
The director's evolving relationship with the Catholic Church became the guiding star for First Light.
"Writing the script was the most cathartic stage of the film — I was trying to map out my journey and my relationship with the church, to find out where I begin."
Robinson found his protagonist in Yolanda, an aging, quietly enigmatic nun who resides in a Spanish missionary church on the verge of collapse. Rocked by the death of Angelo (BJ Forez), a young child mysteriously injured on an unfinished highway project, Yolanda uncovers a cover-up implicating the institution she's devoted her life to.
Her once-impenetrable, stoic demeanour irreversibly shatters; a slow-burning outrage seeps through the ruptures.
Across his illustrious photography career, spanning collaborations with international brands (Burberry, Apple) and prominent artists (Megan Thee Stallion, Park So-Dam), Robinson has remained a stridently political artist.
His On Golden Days exhibition offered a thorny deconstruction of camp, challenging the white fantasies of golden-age Hollywood by turning his lens towards the queer and Filipino communities left on the margins.
Four years ago, the artist famously attracted headlines when he broke into his former high school, St Kevin's College, and set a blazer alight in the middle of an oval, condemning a private school culture that he said coddled abusive behaviour and ostracised him as a queer teenager of colour.
Robinson recalls an early experience of lying at his first Reconciliation in primary school, having felt pressured to confess his own sexuality to his priest as a sin, and how the self-loathing it instilled began to cleave him from his faith.
In the outpouring of responses ignited by Burn the Blazer, Robinson would be told of another student who had been set on a different path.
"Someone around my age had told the priests that they were gay, and they were sent to a conversion therapy camp every year to try and make them straight," he says.
In telling First Light's deeply personal story, Robinson relied upon the expertise and experiences of his Filipino cast and crew, whose contributions and varying interpretations were weaved into the film's fabric.
"I wanted to give everyone the chance to interpret the film in their own sense. I think that's why it comes together, because there are so many different voices [involved] while we're all working towards the same thing on this subtextual level," the director explains.
"It became this beautiful cross-cultural exchange for me and the Australian crew. I'm always trying to reckon the side of me that's Australian with the side of me that's Filipino, to find the places where that intersects."
Robinson is intent on avoiding reductive characterisations, aiming to toe a "complex line" that separates the "core, beautiful values" of Catholicism with its distortion by institutions and governments. He frames the film's broader reckoning as a meditation between Catholicism and Indigenous Tagalog philosophies, reflecting his own personal journey between the former's binary morality and the "grey areas" of the latter.
"Sometimes, there's a beauty in passivity and changing people in really subtle ways, through kindness and slowness. But there are times where you're just so angry, you need to do something. It's a constantly moving thing," he says.
"There's a subversive power in digesting pain and putting out kindness. At the same time, how can we possibly be living in our world, and to just digest [what's happening in] Palestine and America? That's not the only approach."
Robinson and cinematographer Amy Dellar sustain the haunting irresolution of First Light through lingering silences and silken long takes, opening a space for audiences to grapple with those same questions.
Departing from the Technicolour musicals that informed his Maximalist photographic work, Robinson drew upon directors Andrei Tarkovsky and Yasujirō Ozu (whose grave he visited just before filming), whose work inspired him to "leave space for life to happen within the frame".
"I wanted to be very intentional about how our camera was moving to allow the audience the time to process the film."
Despite his Filipino cast predominantly hailing from soap opera ("Over the top in a very beautiful, beautiful way,' Robinson enthuses), their shared theatre backgrounds proved a natural fit for First Light's stripped back, contemplative style.
Each actor leaned into their own approach, the film benefiting from a dynamic juxtaposition between loose improvisation with line-by-line fidelity to the script.
Robinson admits to being intimidated by the veteran cast. He took seriously the responsibility of coordinating with his cast and crew to execute his vision across a feature of this ambition — "It's a much bigger ask than celebrity photo shoots".
No name in the cast was more renowned than Ruby Ruiz, a venerated icon of the Filipino screen who Robinson envisioned in the lead role in the scripting phase.
"Once we had Ruby, the cast really just filled out from there … she's so loved in the industry and has so many wonderful friends. That set the tone for a really relaxed set," he says.
Aware that his actors' experience in the industry outweighed his own, the director continually looked to them for guidance. "I never want to get to a point with my filmmaking where I feel like I know everything; it's a constant process. As my first film, I went into this with an open mind, and these veteran actors were a generous resource for learning."
First Light represents not just the feature debut of its director, but the first Australian-Filipino co-production of its scale, with funding support received from both countries.
Citing Hollywood's history of exploitation, Robinson fought for a generative approach to shooting in his homeland with his film.
"We weren't making this film unless we could avoid being extractive," he says.
The production may just be the tipping point of a new creative relationship between both countries.
"I really hope that the film can serve as a calling card for a lot of my Filipino actors and crew because of how incredibly they've nailed this one. If anything, I'm so excited for this to be a conduit for bringing up some really amazing people in the industry."
MIFF will host final screenings of First Light on August 23.