First Light IFFR Film Review: Faltering Faith

A nun grows suspicious of the institution she’s devoted her life to in First Light, a beautifully ruminative debut feature from James J. Robinson.

While dutifully tending to the poorly at a hospital, she is pulled into an operating theatre to perform last rites for a young man injured in a construction accident. But his fear of dying plays on her mind, and so too do the suspicious circumstances around his death. 

Sister Yolanda (Ruby Ruiz) hardly remembers her life before taking to the convent. Her memories come to her in dreams she is quick to forget, but her novice companion, Sister Arlene (Kare Adea), promises to write them down if Sister Yolanda tells her of them on waking. Her memories, when they come, are of her mother and grandmother, and of her home beside the rice fields and the mountains. They symbolise a cultural ‘before’: before the Catholic Church, before Spanish colonisation, when people were deeply connected to the land. When faced with the corruption of an institution she has represented for most of her life, Sister Yolanda is drawn back to the purity of the ways of her childhood. Ruiz is magnificent and plays the nun with grace, committed to the people around her in a way that’s guided by faith, even at her own expense, while her belief system is faltering. 

Robinson is a photographer of note and he directs cinematographer Amy Dellar to capture the cultural conflicts plaguing the nun via the world around her. The gentle majesty of the wide open sky signals spiritual freedom, while the convent is framed as a decrepit prison. Its 400 year old foundations are leaking and falling to bits, and night time scenes shot within are impenetrably dark. The convent’s walls are less a sanctuary for the faithful, more a stronghold against the beauty found beyond them. Sister Arlene’s hesitancy to take her vows implies hesitancy among the younger generation to commit to a life of servitude, more aware of the potential for spiritual fulfilment on their own terms. 

First Light is entirely about these opposing forces: the oppression of truth inside the church and the raw transcendence found in nature; death as something to be feared versus death as a peaceful return to where we came from; the opulent lifestyle of the lavish Mrs Dela Cruz (Maricel Soriano) and the humble ordinariness of a devout nun. These warring notions ruminate on power and the ways it is wielded.

Sister Yolanda defers to the scripture and the clergy, imbuing them with influence over her life and the community around her. Mrs Dela Cruz, on the other hand, is wrapped up in the death of the young man and uses the church as a shield to escape lawful judgement. For the nun, reclaiming power means reconnecting with her ancestors and questioning those who weaponise the church for their own unethical gain. Doubt is a virtue as a believer, but it is also a way home in First Light for those who have been taken in by an invasive ideology rife with dodgy dealings. 

Robinson has talked freely about his identification with Sister Yolanda. He shares her idealism and her exhaustion. He says: “Growing up queer at a Catholic school and under a religious Filipino roof, I was raised by a particular set of morals which were then manipulated to invalidate my existence”. What religion promised was not what he found there, but he was also aware that spirituality existed separately from the church. First Light is a contemplative journey back to the essence of faith, the kind that isn’t filtered through flawed and human infrastructure. 

First Light was screened at IFFR 2026 on February 2, 2026 and will be screened again in person and online on February 3-5.