At an early age, Jorrybell Agoto was already a dedicated performer. Even when meaning barely holding on to a dried twig and finally tumbling down a small cliff whereas recreating a scene from the 1999 hit Mexican telenovela Rosalinda with youngsters her age, she’d go all in.
“Siyempre buong weight ko na ‘yong pinanghawak ko tapos naputol siya (In fact I used to be already utilizing my complete weight to maintain my grip then the twig snapped),” recalled Agoto, laughing. “Tapos dumausdos ako nang dumausdos (Then I saved sliding down the cliff).”
Now at 31, she has starred in a number of movies that premiered at and toured the worldwide movie competition circuit to numerous acclaim, together with a Finest Actress plum on the 2024 Tokyo Movie Competition for her efficiency in Sam Manacsa’s labor drama Cross My Coronary heart And Hope To Die, first launched in 2023 — Agoto’s breakout yr.
On the time, Agoto had simply secured her first two function movie credit at Cinemalaya: Kevin Mayuga’s When This Is All Over and Gian Arre’s Tether. Her supporting efficiency within the former later earned her a Gawad Urian nod. She additionally starred in a pair extra shorts that yr, similar to Sonny Calvento’s TIFF-selected satire Primetime Mom and Mark Felix Ebreo’s Congratulations, DX!
However it’s Agoto’s emotive visage within the closing scene of Rafael Manuel’s thesis brief Filipiñana that launched me to her promise previous the confines of being an “indie darling.” The movie premiered on the 2020 Berlin Movie Competition, successful the Silver Bear.
The audition course of for Filipiñana was in contrast to the auditions Agoto was used to, the place actors line up in a room and are every requested to carry out a scene or ship a monologue. As an alternative, Agoto was given a one-hour, interactive audition largely to construct rapport with Manuel, then accompanied by producer Kiko Meily. “I couldn’t bear in mind performing out a scene,” she mentioned.
The ultimate callback, although, was epic. Then engaged on an advocacy program in Laguna, Agoto ran so late that she needed to stroll the South Luzon Expressway and guide a bike experience to Makati. When she arrived, sweating and panting, she instantly requested for water. “Sobrang kapal ng mukha ko, ‘te (I used to be so shameless),” mentioned Agoto. Afterward, she received the half.
Agoto has reprised the position for Manuel’s first function of the identical identify, which premiered in-competition on the 2026 Sundance Movie Competition, the place it gained the Particular Jury Award for Artistic Imaginative and prescient, and performed within the Perspective program of this yr’s politically divisive Berlinale, which accepted Agoto into its expertise improvement lab final yr. Govt produced by modern auteur Jia Zhangke, the languid class satire has been acquired by Kino Lorber for theatrical and digital distribution in North America later this yr.
Within the story, Agoto performs a curious, underpaid tee woman named Isabel, who’s step by step uncovered to the sinister secrets and techniques beneath the superbly manicured great thing about an elite Manila golf course. It’s by means of her calculated calmness that the nation membership’s fake placidity, and, by extension, the movie’s narrative, bears extra weight. She by no means misplaced such hypnotic maintain as she slips into related working-class characters all through her filmography, even within the visually gorgeous however finally schematic class commentary of When This Is All Over.
Shot in 2024, Filipiñana had the actress fretting over the temporal hole between the brief and full-length variations, on condition that she performs a teen. “It was one of many struggles and challenges for me: to seize the naïveté and childlike conduct of the character,” she defined.
However with better expertise at her disposal, Agoto grew to become extra clear about her performing selections together with her director, who she mentioned was hands-on however didn’t micro-manage her. Manuel and Agoto had been so in tune with one another as a result of he had saved her on board because the preproduction: interviewing tee women, performing their job, and even enjoying the game itself to higher grasp the category divide the film exposes and golf programs inherently show. “We even had take a look at shoots utilizing an iPhone,” she added.
When Agoto acts, she’s disarmingly stoic and subdued, permitting the trivia to scream her character’s internal disquiet. Meet her in particular person and also you’ll immediately discover she’s worlds aside from her onscreen persona — she is loud, messy, and animated within the sense that humor is her default, like a residing meme. She’s by no means scared to talk her thoughts and communicate at size.
Like Isabel, Agoto moved to Manila from Ilocos — the place she grew up with a youthful brother, a stay-at-home mom, and a authorities employee father — to review theater arts on the Polytechnic College of the Philippines. Deemed “too formidable” by her father for dreaming too large within the metropolis, she grinded her strategy to stability, sufficient to one way or the other subsist on performing.
Her time at PUP laid the inspiration not only for her observe however, extra crucially, her ideas as an artist and particular person. “That’s the place I spotted the duty of being an artist,” mentioned Agoto, detailing how neighborhood theater, like interfacing with and performing for survivors of Tremendous Storm Yolanda (Haiyan), dismantled the Westernized theater she was taught to soak up. “It’s not only a type of self-expression; artists even have the facility to be the voice for these sorts of tales.”
The pivot from theater to movie started when Agoto’s shut buddy and collaborator Christian Dagsil seen she moved oddly on stage. Other than this, singing just isn’t her strongest swimsuit, which saved her from securing roles in an area theater terrain that defaults to musicals. As an alternative, after faculty, she completely labored behind the scenes.
Someday in 2015, she interned on Jet Leyco’s QCinema entry Matangtubig, a small-town crime story akin to Twin Peaks. The movie starred Mailes Kanapi, Agoto’s self-confessed performing awakening. As a result of she slept mid-shoot, Leyco solid her because the physique double for the murdered daughter of Thelma Cruz, portrayed by Kanapi.
Within the scene, which is featured early within the movie for 25 seconds, Thelma, on her knees, identifies her baby’s physique discovered lifeless within the bush, as onlookers collect behind her. The digital camera by no means lands on the precise corpse. On set, although, Agoto was coated by a plastic trash bag, whereas mendacity on the chilly floor underneath blinding lights. There was a tiny hole the place she might see Kanapi getting into the scene, caressing the physique, in full shock, sans tears or any dialogue. Underneath the artificial sheath, Agoto was in sheer awe of what she simply witnessed, screaming and cursing inside her head.
“Ang galing niya. Might naramdaman pa rin ako kahit hindi ‘yong ultimate na iyak na nasa utak ko (She was wonderful. I nonetheless felt one thing, although it wasn’t the best breakdown scene in my thoughts),” she mentioned. “From there, lumakas ‘yong loob ko na gawin ko ‘tong pagpepelikulang ‘to (From there, I received the braveness to pursue filmmaking).”
A yr later, Agoto tried her luck at onscreen performing, although to no avail, together with a botched audition for an unreleased Cinemalaya title. “I couldn’t strike the steadiness,” she mentioned. “If in theater I used to be underacting, in movie I used to be overacting.”
Left with no callbacks and switching between gigs, from managing occasions to promoting condominiums, Agoto discovered her footing by means of photographer Belle Dinglasa, who provided her to behave in music movies, beginning with Nikki Nava’s “Secrets and techniques.” Stripped of a script and due to this fact overpreparation, it allowed her performing course of to be “as human and as pure as attainable,” and to discern that cinema, in contrast to theater, just isn’t an actor’s medium.
That served as a blueprint for her performing model, later refined by a Meisner coaching underneath Angeli Bayani. In Filipiñana, that is palpable by means of the suppressed emotion and restrained physicality she’s tasked to maintain, as Isabel is rarely allowed an explosive launch. “I nonetheless felt my abdomen twisting whereas watching the film [at Berlinale],” she mentioned.
Agoto, nevertheless, dreads that she is perhaps typecast for it. Thankfully, current tasks like Jun Robles Lana’s Sisa, out in native theaters this week, allowed for a extra pronounced performing, assuaging her worry. “In a manner, I’m the comedian reduction within the movie,” shared Agoto.
What will be mentioned for sure is that the actress won’t ever cease enjoying elements reflecting the plight of the working class. “I’ve discovered to simply accept these roles as a result of they’re the manifestation of the present state of the Philippines,” mentioned Agoto. “Not except poverty ceases to exist, these sorts of tales will cease.” Poverty, she insists, is only a widespread denominator of the characters she has performed and by no means a one-size-fits-all expertise that neatly defines them.
Since her breakthrough three years in the past, life hasn’t radically shifted for Agoto but. Her tasks didn’t completely spike up, however she’s not in survival mode. Reserving roles, she mentioned, remains to be a numbers sport, as on-line following components into casting choices. However she doesn’t actually lose religion. Who is aware of if her dream Lav Diaz collaboration is already ready within the wings?
“Kailangan makapanganak pa ng mga filmmakers na matatapang at grabe ‘yong tiwala nila sa mga kuwento nila na hindi na nila inaasa sa mga kukunin nilang artista ‘yong pagiging bankable ng pelikula nila,” she mentioned.
(We want extra filmmakers who’re daring and have immense religion of their tales that they not should depend on the artists they’ll solid for his or her movies to be bankable.)
Agoto has at all times been a perceptive artist on and offscreen in a lot the identical manner as she stays agency in her perception that cinema and any type of artwork will at all times be political.
At this yr’s Berlinale, primary competitors jury president Wim Wenders sparked criticism for saying that filmmakers ought to “keep out of politics” in response to questions in regards to the complicity of the German state, the competition’s main financier, within the Israeli genocide in occupied Palestine.
Regardless of attending the competition for Filipiñana, Agoto mentioned we are able to by no means escape politics. A short scan of her physique of labor attests to that conviction. On the similar time, she hopes that filmmakers maximize the chance to shift the notion of the viewers about systemic injustice and violence.
That turns into extra urgent now in mild of the colonialist Israeli-American bombing of Iran. At this level, it feels bizarre to be speaking about transferring footage when mass killings are livestreamed at a tempo that cruelly desensitizes the world to its horror.
Agoto is aware of full effectively that cinema can solely accomplish that a lot, nevertheless it doesn’t cease her from attempting. “Gawin mong political (Make it political),” she mentioned. “It’s the smallest factor na kaya mong ibigay sa mundo bilang artist (It’s the smallest factor you possibly can provide the world as an artist).”
“Hindi man siya magkakaroon ng abrupt [effect] or treatment sa shit ng mundo pero no less than could mai-instill kang magandang bagay sa viewers na makakapagpabago sa kung paano nila bubuuin ‘yong mundong darating.”
(It won’t have an abrupt [effect] or treatment for the shit of the world, however no less than you possibly can instill one thing good within the viewers which may change the way in which they’ll form the world forward.) – Rappler.com
Observe: Some quotes in Filipino have been translated into English for brevity.
