A film written by a Maui attorney and rooted in the island's Filipino plantation history has landed among eight finalists competing to become the Philippines' official entry for Best International Feature Film at the 99th Academy Awards. All the Things I Leave You (Patawid), an Ilokano-language drama tracing its story back to Maui and Hawaiʻi's sakada history, will learn its fate when the Philippines' National Selection Committee announces its pick during the opening of Philippine Film Industry Month on Sept. 4.
The film is based on an original story by Maui attorney and producer Lance D. Collins, according to Maui Now. The Film Academy of the Philippines announced the eight-film shortlist, which pits Patawid against considerably higher-profile company: Jerrold Tarog's historical biopic Quezon, Rafael Manuel's Sundance award-winner Filipiñana, Jun Robles Lana's war drama Sisa, and Carl Joseph Papa's animated docudrama 58th, as reported by Asian Journal News. The eight shortlisted films were chosen to represent a broad spectrum of historical and contemporary Filipino experiences, according to the same report.
Collins, a Maui public-interest attorney who holds a Ph.D. in Filipino studies from UH Mānoa, wrote the entire project in Ilocano rather than Tagalog, a deliberate choice aimed at helping prevent minority language extinction through popular mass media, per Kauai Now. He previously taught in the Ilokano Language and Literature Program at UH Mānoa and represents Ilocano-speaking clients on Maui. Director Jade Castro, an award-winning Filipino filmmaker who does not speak Ilocano himself, worked alongside Maui Baldwin High School alumnus Joseph Daoang as the production's Ilocano language supervisor to keep the dialogue and regional details authentic, the outlet reported.
A Cigar Box Full of Family History
The story traces back to around 2011, when Collins began writing it after inheriting a box of old photographs and letters following his Filipino grandmother's death. Maui News reports the narrative focuses on retired sakadas who returned to northern Luzon, where their pensions carried higher purchasing power after decades of sending remittances home. In the film, characters Jorge and Kiko discover a hidden cigar box containing unsent letters and photographs that reveal a decades-old love story between a sakada named Tino, who migrated to Lahaina to work on a sugar plantation, and his best friend Bong.
That fictional thread connects to a very real chapter of Hawaiʻi history. Between 1906 and 1946, the Hawaiian Sugar Planters' Association recruited more than 125,000 Filipino contract workers known as sakadas, most from the Ilocos region, to work on Hawaiʻi's sugar and pineapple plantations, according to Hawaiʻi Public Radio. Ilocano laborers became the numerical backbone of Hawaiʻi's agricultural workforce over that period. Patawid connects contemporary life in Ilocos with that history of migration, weaving in themes of class, family, intimacy, memory and inherited legacies, and its score includes several compositions by Queen Liliʻuokalani.
From Web Series to Nationwide Theaters
Patawid began as a six-episode web series before being adapted into a 2-hour-42-minute feature starring Benedix Ramos as Jorge and Justin Paul Basobas as Kiko. It secured a rare nationwide theatrical release across SM Cinemas in the Philippines on June 17, timed to Pride Month, according to the Manila Bulletin. That distribution is notable because Boys' Love media primarily streams digitally rather than playing in theaters.
Before its theatrical run, the project's trailer had already built a substantial following, drawing more than 4 million views on YouTube and 2 million on Facebook by late 2025, per Maui News reporting. The film went on to an extensive international festival run, screening at the Africa International Human Rights Film Festival in Nigeria, the Tianjin International Academic Film Festival in China, the Third Eye Asian Film Festival in India, NewFest in New York, and the Anticensura Film Festival in Argentina, plus academic screenings at Yale University, the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. Along the way it picked up Best LGBT honors at the Anticensura Film Festival, a Top 4th Web Series award at the Jaipur International Film Festival, and Best Episodic Film at the 37th Honolulu Rainbow Film Festival.
Building on a Maui LGBTQ+ Film Legacy
Patawid is not Collins' first venture into LGBTQ+ Hawaiian-Filipino storytelling. He previously wrote and produced My Partner (2023), recognized as Hawaiʻi's first boys' love drama, which won the Narrative Audience Award at the 2023 Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival, according to Hawaiʻi Public Radio. That film, centered on cultural collisions between Filipino immigrant youth and Native Hawaiian students in West Maui, was also the final feature filmed in Lahaina before the August 2023 wildfires.
Whichever film the National Selection Committee ultimately chooses will receive institutional backing for its Oscar campaign. The Film Development Council of the Philippines offers campaign grants of up to ₱25 million through its Oscars Assistance Program to help fund Los Angeles screenings and promotional outreach to Academy voters, per reporting carried by ConnecTV, since international feature campaigns require significant capital for U.S. press outreach and voter screenings. For Patawid, that support would mark a striking leap for a project that started as a regional-language web series built around a Maui family's inherited letters.
