Fresh after Ina’s global premiere at the CANNESERIES international series festival in France, and ahead of its public release, we spoke with its creator Rachel Maxine Anderson about her journey of coming home through her latest series.
A kid who loved dance class, spent every weekend at Blockbuster, and fell in love with the magic of films. Anderson is, by her own description, just a girl from Hervey Bay.
But somewhere in between, something slipped away. “The Filipino-ness in my life kind of started to melt away a little bit. My mum started to assimilate a bit more and I lost touch with that part of myself as I was becoming an adolescent, as a teenager.” She visited the Philippines once at eight years old, with her mum and dad. It would be the last time. “Of course, there is a yearning to go back.”
Entering the film industry in Brisbane during her late teens, and being placed in spaces for people of colour, she felt seen but confused. “I didn’t necessarily feel like I was allowed to identify as being Filipino or being Asian […] because I had grown up feeling so disconnected from that.”
Over time, now at 33, she describes herself proudly: “Filipino-Australian. Australian-Filipino. Australian, because to be Australian is to be so many other things. Or at least that’s how it should be. I’ll never just be one thing.”
That journey – the long way back – is the beating heart of Ina, Anderson’s latest project.
A mix between workplace comedy and family drama, Ina follows ambitious TV producer Madeline (Triona Calimbayan-Giles) who loses her guest chef hours before an important shoot. Desperately, she casts the studio cleaner as the replacement. The cleaner is Gloria (Lena Cruz) – her mother. Her ina.
Read more: Filipino–Australian Series ‘Ina’ to World Premiere at CANNESERIES 2026
“It’s almost impossible for me to tell a Filipino story without linking it to my mother,” Anderson shares. “It was like a love letter I just had to write.” Her mother moved to Australia from the Philippines in her twenties, in the 1980s.
Madeline, she explains, “came to me in this shape of avoidance – a woman who struggles with being vulnerable or struggles with connection and has buried herself in her work. Unless someone is brave enough to come more than halfway towards you, you never quite connect.”
Ina premiered at the Cannes International Series Festival in France in April, becoming the first Filipino-centred project screened in the festival’s nine-year history. Anderson had quietly braced herself for the possibility that a story so specifically Filipino-Australian might not travel. It did. Viewers talked about their own mothers, their grandmothers, the women who had raised them. “It didn’t matter where somebody was from, they could relate.”
“We were in Cannes doing karaoke with this group of Filipino women,” when Anderson found an unexpected piece of home. “I’m just showing up entirely as me. I feel completely safe in a community like that.”
Despite the glamour of Cannes, it’s still a vulnerable journey. “There was always this layer of vulnerability that I felt the whole time I was there. As the creator of this show, it’s such a personal story as well. Even just talking to you right now, I feel it in my stomach. It’s really vulnerable work. When you’ve written something and directed it and it comes from a place of truth – it definitely sits in the body.”
Ina also wrestles with cultural representation in the screen industry. “Sometimes you can feel when a person is trying to tick a box with you… There was definitely an element of rage that propelled some of the writing in Ina.”
Ina goes live on YouTube on June 12 – Philippine Independence Day. Anderson hopes viewers who have grown up feeling confused about where they belong feel a little less alone. She hopes it makes people want to call their mum, grandma, or friends. “I grew up feeling like I had to mask certain parts of myself to belong. And now I don’t. I’m really proud of this show and I’m really proud of the Filipino creatives behind it. Here I am, not ashamed anymore.”
Once live, Anderson plans to watch Ina with her mother, who will be seeing the complete series for the first time. They will sit together, watch that love letter finally delivered, and talk for a while.
As Gloria asks in the series: “Will you finally come home for dinner?”
Ina releases via YouTube on Friday, 12 June, Philippine Independence Day, at www.youtube.com/@ina.series
Watch this trailer
Created by Rachel Maxine Anderson. Written & Directed by Rachel Maxine Anderson. Produced by Rae Choi & Danielle Redford. Executive Producers Kerrin McNeil & Ruby Ruiz. Starring Triona Calimbayan-Giles & Lena Cruz.
