A clip from Ilo Ilo (SingaporeA clip from Leonor Will Never Die (Arkeofilms, ANIMA)
Leonor Will Never Die is a 2022 psychological comedy drama film from the Philippines. It is written and directed by Martika Ramirez Escobar as her directorial debut. The film is supported by the Film Development Council of the Philippines (FDCP) through CreatePHFilms funding programme and Full Circle Lab. The film premiered at Sundance Film Festival 2022 and won a Special Jury Prize for Innovative Spirit. It also won Amplify Voices in Toronto International Film Festival 2022.
Leonor Will Never Die is about Leonor, a retired screenwriter and director that fell into a coma and entered the life of the action hero in her unfinished screenplay. The films blurred the line between reality and fiction. It can be categorised into meta-cinema, where the plot of the film is a film-within-a-film format. Leonor as the main character writes a screenplay about a 1980s action film that is abundant with shoot out and fighting scenes. It is layered again where she is brought in the screenplay that she writes and meets with Ronwaldo, the main hero who resembles her late son with the same name.
Official poster of Leonor Will Never Die (Arkeofilms, ANIMA)
Another characteristic of meta-cinema is breaking the fourth wall, where characters in the films directly mention to the audience or acknowledge that they are in a film. It is one of the only films that have film-within-a-film format and also breaking the fourth wall. It has a mind-boggling ending with the film’s director showing up on screen and talking about how to end the film with other crew members. She finally decided to end the film in a musical with Sheila Fransisco (the actress playing Leonor) leading the song. This complex layer of metaness makes it one-of-a-kind films.
“Age ain’t nothing but a number” is something that could define Leonor Will Never Die. The film challenges the common assumption that creativity, relevance and heroism belong only to the young. Through the character of Leonor, an elderly former action screenwriter, the story shows that imagination and artistic passion do not fade with age. Even as the world around her moves on and the film industry seems to have forgotten her, Leonor continues to create, rewrite and inhabit the stories she once dreamed of.
A clip from Leonor Will Never Die (Arkeofilms, ANIMA)
By placing an elderly woman at the center of an action narrative, director Martika Ramirez Escobar reimagines a genre traditionally dominated by young male heroes. Leonor’s journey inside the action film she wrote becomes a metaphor for reclaiming agency and refusing the limitations imposed by age and gender. In this sense, the film transforms imagination into a form of resistance. Leonor proves that creative power and the desire to shape one’s own narrative can endure at any stage of life.
The exaggerated action world also subtly reflects Philippine realities, where drug use is heavily stigmatised and often met with harsh, shameful responses. At the same time, the film shows how the media can shape perception, offering simplified ideas of justice where good and evil are clearly divided. For Leonor, this fictional space becomes a way to cope with grief, using storytelling to momentarily escape the pain of loss.
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