Back from Cannes: writer-director Rachel Maxine Anderson on making the series ‘Ina’

Anderson admits she was initially anxious that the specific cultural textures and humour wouldn’t translate to a predominantly European audience. However, the warm welcome they received proved that “our stories actually can belong on the world stage... When I met two of the jury members, the first thing they did was just hold me,” she warmly recalls.

The series, cleverly set over a single chaotic television shoot, utilises a volatile workplace as a “Trojan horse” for intimate emotional storytelling. Anderson astutely notes, “The chaos of the TV studio environment was the perfect pressure cooker to crack open the quiet, unresolved grief between Madeline and Gloria... It strips away her professional mask and forces her into a corner where she has no choice but to react from a place of genuine feeling.”

Opting for a short-form online format was a highly intentional move by the creative team. Producer Rae Choi explains they wanted Anderson to retain authorship and build their own momentum, noting, “We wanted to make something now, to create our own momentum rather than wait for permission.” Anderson herself wanted to prove that “relationship dynamics and a story world can be just as rich even with a short amount of screen time.”

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Ina delves into the complex life of Madeline, an ambitious producer who makes the risky choice to cast her mother—the studio cleaner—as a replacement guest chef. Calimbayan-Giles immediately connected with the script, recalling, “I messaged Rachel immediately after reading it, saying, ‘You have quite literally stepped into my brain!’... Reading those scripts was the first time I’d ever felt like I was one hundred per cent represented on script,” she shares.

The casting of Lena Cruz as Gloria brought a grounded, emotional depth to the production. “I saw my mother and myself in her—especially in that stubbornness and hard-headedness, so it was really fun to explore that,” Cruz remarks about her character. For Anderson, the nuanced balance of humour and heartbreak in the series stems entirely from the exact same place, as the funny moments arise because these two women are genuinely desperate.

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Anderson drew heavily from her own deeply personal experiences when crafting Madeline’s journey of cultural displacement. “I spent the better part of my twenties operating inside a very similar headspace to the one Madeline is in when we first meet her,” she admits. She often watched her mother assimilate to become “Aussie” while burying her own sense of displacement beneath a determination to succeed professionally.

Food and sound are masterfully used as vehicles for connection and tension throughout the series. Anderson notes that food is “such a powerful gateway to culture and also to loving each other.” Meanwhile, the soundscape mirrors the characters' internal struggles, featuring a faint, ancestral Filipino chant that grows louder as the day unravels, acting as “a visceral calling back to the part of herself she has forgotten.”

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The entire creative process became a beautifully transformative journey for Anderson’s relationship with her heritage. “Before writing Ina, my relationship with my heritage was defined by a lot of quiet insecurity and a feeling of not being ‘Filipino enough,’” she confesses. Through the catharsis of directing, she moved from a place of regret and shame to a space of deep self-compassion. “I no longer feel like I’m treading water between two worlds—I feel grounded in the fact that my culture isn’t something I have to earn.” 

The strategic decision to launch Ina on YouTube on Philippine Independence Day was a deliberate subversion of Madeline’s character arc. “To launch a story like this on June 12—a day completely dedicated to celebrating Filipino identity, sovereignty and pride—feels like the ultimate subversion of what Madeline is trying to do,” Anderson proudly states. “Madeline starts the show hiding her mother away in the background, but by launching on Independence Day, we are choosing to put a story about two Filipino women right at the very centre of the frame.”

Choosing a global platform like YouTube completely removes geographic borders for the diasporic communities they hope to reach. “We aren’t just in one place; we are everywhere,” Anderson declares. The free, instantly accessible format allows audiences to watch it anywhere, whether they are “on a train in London or in a jeepney in Manila.”

The groundbreaking series is already serving as a profound comfort for mixed-race individuals navigating the unsteady space between cultures. “Growing up between cultures, you often feel like you’re either constantly hiding or performing—trying to be ‘enough’ for whatever room you’re standing in,” Anderson thoughtfully reflects. “It is so wonderful to see that our show can be a little bit of balm to a wound so many of us didn’t even know we had.”

Ultimately, Anderson hopes Ina opens the door for families to discuss the deeply personal things they have kept beneath the surface. She wants viewers to have a laugh, maybe a good cry and feel safe enough “to say the things they’ve been too scared to say out loud.” By leaning fully into the absolute specificity and honesty of a culture, she has proven that filmmakers can “unlock the most universal parts of the human experience.”

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