A 17-year-old girl lines up golf balls for wealthy men at an elite country club outside Manila. She wanders pristine grounds, samples luxuries meant for others, and stumbles into something dark beneath the manicured fairways.

That’s the setup for “Filipiñana,” Rafael Manuel’s debut feature that won the Special Jury Award for Creative Vision at Sundance earlier this year. Executive produced by acclaimed Chinese filmmaker Jia Zhangke, the film follows Isabel as she navigates the stark divide between the club’s powerful members and its subservient staff. When she tries to return a lost golf club to the club’s patriarchal director, she ventures deeper into exclusive spaces where the violent truths of privilege, power, and her own past collide.

Critics are calling it a masterwork. The New Yorker says it “opens new vistas in the future of cinema,” while NPR praises it as “an incisive, slow-burning satire of capitalism and powerful men with far too much hubris.”

Kino Lorber is releasing the film August 28 at Film Forum in New York, followed by LA and select cities September 4. Shot in Filipino, English, and Ilokano, it’s the kind of singular vision that reminds you why theaters still matter.