We watch movies to be entertained and inspired, but film can also serve as a powerful medium for illuminating inconvenient truths and bringing to cinematic light the lived experiences of people, especially the marginalized.
It takes courage to tell these stories, for they may not fare well at the box office, win favor with awards jurors, or appeal to the sensibilities of those in positions of influence and power. It also takes courage to watch them, for we may well be reminded of our complicity in the realities they depict.
Antonette Jadaone’s Sunshine—released last year and now streaming on Netflix—is one such film. It seeks not only to entertain but also to illuminate, shedding light on the dark realities of reproductive health, bodily autonomy, and structural neglect in the Philippines. The film follows Sunshine (Maris Racal), a talented gymnast who has notched victories at the Asian Games and is poised to reach her Olympic dreams—until she discovers she is pregnant.
What follows is a frenetic, psychological, claustrophobic journey, with gymnastics serving as metaphor for the contortions, bodily and otherwise, that Sunshine has to undergo to navigate an inaccessible, judgmental health care system, in an equally inhospitable city.
As she is forced to bear the consequences of her pregnancy, Sunshine finds herself abandoned, disowned by her boyfriend Miggy (Elijah Canlas) and her friends, and she turns to increasingly desperate measures that nearly kill her. But although she bears the emotional and physical pain by herself, she is never truly alone, finding unlikely company—and solidarity—in her struggle.
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As Le Baltar wrote in philstarlife.com, Sunshine is “more than an abortion movie,” and its hot-button issue should not detract from the film’s beauty. I am no film critic, but I have seen enough of film to say that I heartily agree with reviews praising Jadaone’s masterful use of pop-realism, Maris Racal’s compelling performance, and the film’s balance between light and darkness, freedom (represented by the gymnast’s range of motion) and bondage (the confined spaces of the motel, the hospital, and the city), and indeed, between life and death.
In a similar vein, it is also worth noting that the film is as much about children as it is about women: children forced to become adults, children deprived of their own right to a safe and happy childhood. And it is about actual children who face unimaginable forms of violence from adults—not only the spectacular violence of extrajudicial killings, but also the everyday violence enacted against young people, including at the hands of their own families, as this haunting dialogue between Sunshine and 13-year-old Mary Grace reveals:
“Bakit hindi ka magpa-checkup?
“Checkup? Mahal yun eh.”
“E di pagbayarin mo yung jowa mo.”
“Di ko naman jowa yun. Tito ko yun.”
But at the same time, the film’s beauty should not detract or diminish attention from where the film shines the spotlight: the cruel and not-so-hidden realities of abortion in our country. There are over a million Sunshines in our country each year, and they each have their distinct stories. Many may feel more conflicted than Sunshine, and a majority, per some studies, are actually married. What they have in common, as my colleague Ana Santos pointed out in Rappler, is that their experiences mirror those depicted in the film, from the rise of unwanted teenage pregnancies and the underground medical sojourns—to Quiapo and elsewhere—that lead to 1,000 women dying each year due to post-abortion complications.
As in the film, it is easy to blame women. Our laws, which ban abortion without any explicit exception, criminalize them and medical professionals who provide care, while turning a blind eye to the social conditions that make these decisions necessary—from the lack of information and access to health care to the stigma and shame that women face regardless of what they end up doing or not doing. Indeed, Sunshine reminds us that behind every “choice” is a lack of real options.
Surely, men, too, face struggles; not all are like Miggy—immature, unloving, uncaring—and they, too, suffer from the absence of comprehensive sex education and the lack of peer support and of nontoxic mentors and role models. But as the film rightfully shows, the stakes are much higher for women: While Miggy can choose to walk away, or try to walk back, from the unwanted pregnancy, it is Sunshine alone who must bear it as well as most of the consequences.
It is just as easy to pretend the problem does not exist, or to imagine pregnancy as a purely moral or theological issue without bodies, feelings, lives, relationships involved. Indeed, even within the medical profession—and I say this as a medical doctor myself—abortion is hardly discussed whether in public-facing forums or even in medical education. Instead—and as I have personally experienced—medical students might be exposed to scenes very similar to those in the film: Sunshine waking up in a hospital bed only to be berated, judged, and shamed by a self-righteous OB-GYN; Sunshine pleading for doctors to admit her even-younger friend but instead facing judgment in the ER.
Thankfully, as the film also shows, there are others who act differently—such as the compassionate Dr. Helena (Angeli Bayani)—and they make a big difference. Still, and notwithstanding the tireless efforts of Dr. Junice Melgar and other longtime reproductive health advocates, Sunshine puts the medical profession to rightful shame because we have collectively not done anything significant on this issue despite being one of the few groups who can make a difference.
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In the end, Sunshine performs the ultimate somersault: She survives and lives to (re)claim the spotlight on the stage. Beyond the quiet triumph it conveys, the film’s restrained ending pays tribute to women athletes, like Hidilyn Diaz, who have long had to navigate gendered pressures and sacrifices in their pursuit of glory.
The film also hints at the importance of solidarities in the face of structural violence, resonating with research such as that of Ateneo de Manila University’s Juleini Vivien Nicdao, who, alongside finding a “complex interplay between digital and physical spaces,” show that women seek and find affinities in such spaces, where collective resistance might lie. In the film, Sunshine’s embodied experiences allow her to support Mary Grace, who reminds her of herself, and she is in turn supported by her older sister Geleen—herself struggling with single motherhood—as well as the unnamed child (Annika Co) that serves as her spiritual guide, and even her coach (brilliantly portrayed by Meryll Soriano), who betrays a maternal care beneath her disciplinarian façade.
And yet more is required of us, beyond spectatorship.
We cannot unsee the life that the film brings to light. If we are to truly build a health care system that truly cares—and indeed a humane society—then everybody, especially women and children, must be given access to safe, compassionate, and comprehensive reproductive care. Thus, I join my colleagues and many others in advocating for “the decriminalization of abortion and ensuring access to safe abortion, which begins with halting the prosecution of patients and abortion care providers.”
Regardless of our divergent views on this matter, I hope we can at the very least respond to the film’s plea, in the words of Matt Ordonez, “for a more compassionate society, one where young women like Sunshine don’t face their struggles in isolation, where health care providers offer support rather than judgment, and where families and friends create safe spaces for difficult conversations.”
Only then can stories like Sunshine’s cease to be reflections of our realities, and instead become reminders of how far we have come.
Gideon Lasco is an anthropologist and physician currently serving as professorial lecturer at the University of the Philippines Diliman and as Takemi Fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health. A Palanca Award-winning essayist and longtime commentator on health, culture and society, he is the author of five books, including “The Philippines Is Not a Small Country” (2020), a winner of the National Book Award.
