Cover In Jerrold Tarog’s ‘Quezon’, Jericho Rosales delivers a searing and magnetic portrayal of Manuel L Quezon (Photo: screenshot from TBA Studios' trailer)
In Jerrold Tarog’s ‘Quezon’, Jericho Rosales delivers a searing and magnetic portrayal of Manuel L Quezon (Photo: screenshot from TBA Studios' trailer)
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Jericho Rosales commands the screen as Manuel L Quezon in Jerrold Tarog’s sweeping third ‘Bayaniverse’ film
Body and soul. The phrase surfaces again and again in Quezon, each time charged with new meaning—a vow, a threat, a manipulation. It is how Manuel L Quezon (Jericho Rosales) pledges himself to the dream of independence, and how he justifies every compromise along the way.
To most Filipinos, he is the noble first president of the Philippine Commonwealth, the visionary who dreamed of independence under the shadow of American rule. The man immortalised in marble, in city, province and street names and on the twenty-peso bill. But Jerrold Tarog’s film peels back that familiar gloss, revealing not the textbook hero but the restless man beneath.
The highly-anticipated third instalment of TBA Studios’s decade-long Bayaniverse—following Heneral Luna (2015) and Goyo: Ang Batang Heneral (2018)—opens not with pomp or politics but with a film within a film: a silent black-and-white dramatisation of younger Quezon (Benjamin Alves). It’s a clever conceit and an affectionate nod to early Filipino cinema, but also a warning. By framing history as a performance, Tarog shows that the telling of history is itself an act of creation. It could be selective, subjective and in the hands of those in power, dangerously persuasive.
Few spoilers ahead.
Above Cris Villanueva as Joven Hernando and Rosales as Quezon (Photo: Harold Soon)
Cris Villanueva as Joven Hernando and Rosales as Quezon (Photo: Harold Soon)
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We are then swept into 1935. Quezon, played with vigorous conviction by Rosales, basks in the glow of his electoral victory when an old friend reappears: Joven Hernando (Cris Villanueva), once the idealistic young journalist of Heneral Luna and Goyo, now older, wiser and disillusioned. Their reunion begins politely but quickly turns into a confrontation. Hernando questions the recent shutdown of his newspaper, leading to a philosophical duel on truth, compromise and the moral cost of ambition.
That tension becomes the film’s backbone as they revisit Quezon’s fraught relationships: with Sergio Osmeña (Romnick Sarmenta), Governor-General Leonard Wood (Iain Glen, portrayed with unexpected grace) and the ever-divisive Emilio Aguinaldo (Mon Confiado, in a moving, redemptive turn).
Read more: Iain Glen on the warmth of Filipinos, chaotic streets and why ‘Quezon’ is worth watching
President and COO of TBA Studios Daphne Chiu Soon shared that Tarog read over 50 resource materials to build his preferred timeline of Quezon’s life, later refined with co-writer Rody Vera. It’s that depth of research that anchors the story’s power.
As Chiu Soon explains, TBA Studios has always sought to “educate and entertain.” Grounded in fact but enriched by imagination, the film blends historical truth with creative storytelling — a balance best embodied by Hernando, the fictional journalist who represents the ordinary Filipino in the grand sweep of history. Through Hernando’s eyes, we witness Quezon’s ascent and his slow unravelling.
It’s hard to view it apart from Heneral Luna and Goyo; rather, it feels like the inevitable reckoning those films were leading to. Tarog’s vision has come full circle, and it’s his most introspective yet.
Above Scottish actor Iain Glen as Governor-General Leonard Wood (Photo: screenshot from TBA Studios’ trailer)
Scottish actor Iain Glen as Governor-General Leonard Wood (Photo: screenshot from TBA Studios’ trailer)
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The film is strongest when it embraces the political theatre—the sparring of ideals, the jockeying for influence, the tension of men convinced they alone hold the country’s destiny. There are no battlefields here, only rooms thick with rhetoric, smoke and men debating the nation’s fate as if playing chess with history itself.
The exchanges between Quezon and Wood, for instance, feel like verbal warfare: civility wielded as a weapon and diplomacy as a duel. Even Aguinaldo, long vilified by history, is given empathy. Confiado’s nuanced performance reframes him not as a villain but as a casualty, a man haunted by his own legend, seeking redemption too late. You find yourself, at times, rooting for him, aware that redemption is as political as it is personal.
Rosales commands the screen with an orator’s rhythm and a politician’s swagger. He looks nothing like Quezon, and yet that feels irrelevant. His Quezon is magnetic, eloquent, manipulative and every inch a man intoxicated by power. He is not the saintly leader immortalised in monuments but a volatile, domineering figure who curses, charms and connives in equal measure. By the time he declares, “I am the Philippines,” in the film’s chilling final moment, it feels less like triumph and more like confession.
Read more: Jericho Rosales on stepping into the shoes of 'Quezon'
Above Rosales as Quezon and Mon Confiado as Emilio Aguinaldo (Photo: screenshot from TBA Studios' trailer)
Rosales as Quezon and Mon Confiado as Emilio Aguinaldo (Photo: screenshot from TBA Studios' trailer)
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The cinematography is rich and atmospheric, the production design meticulously recreates the elegance and tension of the 1930s and the musical scoring carries the story with grandeur and melancholy.
Read more: Karylle reveals her fated connection to the role Aurora Quezon: ‘Everything just connected’
Tarog also folds in a poignant love letter to cinema through Nadia (Therese Malvar), Joven’s daughter and Quezon’s goddaughter, an aspiring filmmaker. Her black-and-white campaign reels for Quezon blur the lines between propaganda and art, truth and myth. When it is revealed that she made two versions, one glorifying Quezon, another condemning him, the film’s meta-commentary solidifies: history, like film, depends on which cut survives.
There are no cavalry charges or heroic deaths here, only the subtle violence of politics. Yet the film never drags. Its pacing is deliberate, its dialogue taut and its moral tension unrelenting. By the end, Quezon becomes more than a portrait of one man but a reflection of an entire system. Tarog draws a clear through-line between Quezon’s shrewd diplomacy—his talent for appeasing both Americans and Filipino elites—and the political culture that still defines us today. In chasing independence “body and soul,” Quezon also perfected the template of patronage and compromise that continues to shape the nation’s fate.
What makes Quezon so haunting is how easily its world mirrors our own. The power plays behind closed doors, the eloquent justifications for corruption, the belief that ends justify means—they all feel painfully familiar. Nearly a century later, the same political theatre plays on, with new actors but the same script.
The film invites us to recognise that Quezon’s greatest flaw, his conviction that he was the nation, remains the same illusion many of our leaders still cling to.
Quezon closes the Bayaniverse with reckoning, stripping away the myth and confronting the uncomfortable truth: that devotion, when bound to ambition, can blur into tyranny.
Syrah is Tatler Philippines’ Power & Purpose editor, where she spotlights extraordinary journeys shaping the Philippines and Asia. She covers business, innovation, impact, and culture—chasing the people, ideas and forces shaping how we live and think today.
