Volleyball can be a space for romance, at least that’s what director Samantha Lee has imagined in her Filipino coming-of-age sports film Rookie.

The movie opens with Pat Tingjuy’s Ace being transferred to a new school, she may be a skilled basketball player but the nuns at her academy think the sport turns girls into lesbians. So, instead, she’s offered the chance to play volleyball. There she meets Jana (Aya Fernandez), the most talented player on the Angels’ senior team, and soon the girls’ rivalry turns to friendship, and then into love.

Rookie takes inspiration from Lee’s own life, who was once told the same thing by nuns when she wanted to play basketball, but it is also something more. It’s a sweet, romantic tale that isn’t afraid to tackle difficult subjects alongside its central love story. This made it a perfect film for the Far East Film Festival in Udine, which always helps support unique voices in the movie industry like Lee.

The filmmaker sat down with View of the Arts to speak more about the film, how queer cinema will always have an important place in her heart, and why Western audiences seeking LGBTQ+ cinema can find it in Asia – they need only be open to watching films with subtitles.

View of the Arts: The film draws from your own adolescence, why were you keen to use your experience as the inspiration for the film?

Samatha Lee: Everything is personal, isn’t it? I think that being the captain of my basketball team had such a profound impact on the way that I run my sets in general, and so I wouldn’t be the director that I am today if I didn’t go through that experience. I credit sports for a lot of the things that I am today, part of it is that, and also, in a non-me aspect, women’s volleyball is the most watched sport in the Philippines, so in terms of being able to find funding for the film that is such a big part of it.

View of the Arts: At the film’s screening you explained that you were told by nuns that playing basketball makes girls gay. The film starts in the same way, how much did you want to change the story in Rookie to distinguish it from your own experience?

Samatha Lee: The ending of that anecdote is that I told my mum that I was willing to wake up an hour earlier just so we wouldn’t move to that school, and so this is kind of like an alternate reality, what would have happened. It’s not really [about] what I would have changed, it’s kind of like a reimagining of that time.

View of the Arts: I’d love to talk about your cast in Rookie, how did you come to find your leads Pat Tingjuy and Aya Fernandez?

Samantha Lee: Volleyball is really big in the Philippines and this is the first-ever Filipino volleyball film, so there was a lot of pressure for me to get it right. We ended up doing a casting call for non-actors, for volleyball players, and then Pat Tingjuy got the lead role. Everyone else who auditioned for that role we cast as her support Angels, so everyone ended up being in the film anyway.

View of the Arts: The film features several volleyball matches, how did you want to approach putting these together for Rookie?

Samantha Lee: Honestly, it was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do in my life, and I understand why. There hadn’t been a volleyball film prior to this, it was really difficult – especially since we had nine days to shoot. There are a lot of lessons I learned during that time. I knew that I didn’t want it to seem like a televised sports match, if that makes sense. The shots were intentionally all over the place because I wanted you to feel like you were on the court. 

There were lots of shots that were also direct references to [Japanese volleyball manga] Haikyuu, like when Ace held the ball up to her face, or the last shot of the ball at the end of the match.

View of the Arts: As well as exploring the coming-of-age romance between Ace and Jana, Rookie also examines the issue of sexual abuse faced by young players. Why were you keen to tackle this topic in your film?

Samantha Lee: It’s a very real part of this sport, we did a lot of research for this and a lot of the volleyball players we interned at all stages – from college to professional volleyball players – have had this shared experience in one form or another, and so I thought it was really important. Now if you love the game you need to know what goes on behind the scenes, because you need to be able to advocate for the players who are going through these experiences. 

The film is about a female sports team so you have to bring women’s issues into the sport, all the things that they experience from discrimination to abuse and harassment. On all my films for my crew I like to get all the women or queer staff together to just create a safe space, especially with the subject matter that my films will surely tackle.

For example, in the locker room scene [where the girls talk about the sexual abuse they were subjected to by their physiotherapist] I had some lines written down in the script [but] I told the girls, ‘feel free to say whatever you want in that room’. I think that was one of the manifestations of why it’s so important to create safe spaces for girls everywhere, there are some experiences that only they can understand.

View of the Arts: You’ve become a bright voice in Filipino film, how has it felt to become such a leader in the industry?

Samantha Lee: This is my third film so far, and I’ve made a series as well in the last seven years, and they’ve all been queer. It’s still crazy to me that I got to make those things in the way that I wanted to make them, you know what I mean? But right before flying here I had two projects that didn’t get green-lit,.so the struggle is still very real and I don’t think I’ve gotten to that place yet where I feel like my next project is for sure. Everything is always still up in the air!

View of the Arts: Why is it important for you to put a spotlight on queer stories in your films?

Samantha Lee: Growing up in the Philippines, it’s very conservative and so I didn’t really see a representation of myself in local media. All the gay people were either made fun of or they were hurt, like there were a lot of acts of violence towards them. And whenever they would portray queer stories it was always really dark and they’re always in the shadows, they’re always hiding.

I think this had a profound effect in my becoming a person to the point that I didn’t really come out till I was 23. I always say that my films are the kinds of films I needed to see when I was younger. Then, thematically, they’re about adolescence and good memories, so they’re kind of like wish fulfilment in a sense. If I got to go to prom with a girl I liked what if I got to wear a suit? I didn’t get to experience that, but hopefully the kids who come see my film get to live that out.

I always see things on social media like Americans, or people from the West in general, always complaining: ‘We don’t have enough lesbian films with happy endings’, or 1we need a lesbian rom-com’. And I kind of feel like I’m screaming into the void, being like ‘we’re here, but we’re just hidden under subtitles that might intimidate you’. The hope is that, eventually, my work reaches a wider variety of audiences.

View of the Arts: You compared being a director to leading a basketball team earlier, what do you feel your time in the sport taught you as a filmmaker?

Samantha Lee: In basketball, you have specific positions –point guard, or the centre power forward– and it’s the same thing on a film set. You have your cinematographer, your production designer, your sound guy. It’s your job as the team captain to make sure that each player is prepared to do their part of the film, but at the same time, they’re well aware that each of their actions affect the other departments. So they need to be able to think ‘How can I make myself the best department?’ but also, ‘how do I help the other departments have an easier time in making the film?’

View of the Arts: What would you say was the biggest thing you learned during the process of making this film?

Samantha Lee: I mean, because of the budget, it had to be a nine-day shoot. What I think is an interesting thing that came out postmortem was everyone said that they had so much fun shooting it, I just remember this whole memory of me being stressed. So I think the thing that I learned is that it’s so important for me that everyone has fun, but maybe in my next film, I also need to make sure that I’m having fun too.

View of the Arts: Looking forward to the future, what do you see for your career? And what kind of stories do you want to tell?

Samantha Lee: The stories I want to make, like my top-line dream, is to make a commercial rom-com that’s queer. I mean, if you look at my films the treatment is very rom-com heavy, but the budget isn’t like a big studio. So I think that’s the next thing I want to tick off my list, I wanna do a big budget, big studio rom-com.

Written and interviewed by Roxy Simons

Featured image © View of the Arts

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