'Forgotten Island': Joyous, Painful Love Note To Filipino Diaspora

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As a Filipino-Australian and a mother, I felt both joy and pangs of sadness watching the story unfold. Seeing Filipino culture rendered on such a scale was moving, especially through the eyes of my seven-year-old daughter, who delighted in the film's references to jeepney vehicles, karaoke, Tagalog phrases, Filipino music and mythology.

The cast also celebrates performers with Filipino background, including H.E.R., Soberano, Salonga, Dolly de Leon and Jo Koy.

Yet beyond this celebration of Filipino culture lies a more bittersweet story. As an academic who has spent two decades researching the Filipino diaspora, I was struck by the film's underlying anxieties about memory, separation and return – concerns that echo with one of the world's largest diasporas.

A story for a scattered people

What do we carry with us when we leave home and what is at risk of being lost? These are the questions that animate“Forgotten Island.” It also speaks to the experience of migration that has become so deeply embedded in Philippine society.

In search of work and a better life, close to 11 million Filipinos live outside of the Philippines. This makes the Filipino diaspora among the top ten largest in the world, spread across more than 100 countries.

Filipinos have long migrated to North America as permanent settlers, reflecting the Philippines' colonial ties to the US. But since the 1970s, migration destinations have expanded to the United Kingdom, Europe and Australia. In Australia, Filipinos are the fifth-largest migrant group and third-largest Asian community after those born in India and China.

Large numbers are also temporary migrant workers in the Persian Gulf states and across Asia.

Among the most prominent migrants are overseas Filipino workers – OFWs, as they are known in the Philippines – who number around 2.5 million globally and continue to increase each year. Remittances from these migrants contribute tens of billions of dollars annually to the Philippine economy, amounting to around 8.5% of the country's GDP in 2025.

Raissa's departure for the US reflects a deeply familiar trajectory for many Filipinos, for whom migration has become both an aspiration and a necessity. For a large number of Filipino youth, the question is not whether they will migrate, but where.

The toll of migration

The fear of forgetting that drives“Forgotten Island” echoes the social and emotional costs of migration.

Many Filipino children grow up with one or both parents working and living overseas, and families sustain their relationships across borders through phone calls, video chats and periodic reunions. In the film, Jo is a daughter of a migrant father working overseas, left behind for her lola (grandmother) to raise.