A story about the life of a young girl living with her mother in the slums of Manila, which becomes unbearable when her mother's young boyfriend moves in with them.
"Insiang" is as much a national captivity narrative as it is a very specific suffering-woman saga (with shades of the classic maternal melodrama).
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Richard Brody
RTThe New YorkerOct 26, 2015
This intense, furious melodrama, by the Filipino director Lino Brocka, fuses its narrative energy with documentary veracity.
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Nick Schager
RTSlant MagazineOct 24, 2015
Lino Brocka's portrait of familial treachery and societal abandonment channels its melodrama through the filter of neorealism.
R
Ryan Oquiza
RTSinegangAug 18, 2023
Every frame of this film epitomizes the deteriorating conditions the slums had to endure under Marcos’s dictatorship in the '70s. It’s a social realist venture into the very soul of the Filipino people in a time replete with turmoil.
