Women in Film & Photography 2025 Exhibition
Hidden Longings | DEMIE DANGLA

During the late 1980s and 1990s, overseas Filipino workers and their families in the Philippines communicated through cassette tapes. These messages often took days or even weeks to arrive, leading to long periods of waiting, anxiety, and anticipation.

I grew up in that era. This exhibition explores the perspective and experiences of a left-behind child, as I confront my emotional distance from my father, who left our family to work in Saudi Arabia as a migrant worker in 1988. The cassette tapes, beyond their materiality, reveal the invisible cost of labor migration, as families are forced to be separated to survive economically and provide for their loved ones.

The Philippines is a nation of migrant workers, with its main export being its people. The country ranks among the world’s largest sources of migrant workers, with millions employed abroad in countries like the United States, Canada, Saudi Arabia, and across Asia.

The cassette tapes I’ve collected from various families contain written texts that carry the emotional weight of those who wrote them, dreaming and longing to be reunited one day. Just like the photo collages I’ve created, inspired by the ones my father used to make while dealing with his feelings of homesickness and loneliness, these tapes speak volumes.

This cycle of separation among Filipino families continues today, driven by poverty and the lack of better wages in our own country. I see this as a form of systemic economic violence. As a result, many children grow up without their parents by their side, carrying a longing into adulthood – something we don’t often talk about.

Hidden Longings is an ongoing project that is also an extended cinema exhibition and an impact initiative connected to my upcoming full-length documentary film Magnetic Letters.

About Demie Dangla
Demie Dangla (b. 1992, Manila) is a Filipina filmmaker and photographer whose work delves into creative documentaries, experimental, and multimedia. She is an alumna of Berlinale Talents (2023, Germany), Docs by the Sea (2023, Indonesia), IDFAcademy (2023, The Netherlands), Full Circle Lab (2024, Philippines) and was selected to pitch at Visions du Réel (2024, Switzerland) and Cannes Docs (2025, France).

Her storytelling practice began in journalism. She has worked as a writer, researcher, and producer for a television documentary show, as well as a photojournalist and videographer for an alternative, collective media group documenting marginalised communities across various regions in the Philippines. In 2016, she was awarded the National Geographic Young Explorer grant.

Her independent and artistic works have been shown at Gawad Alternatibo, Cinema Rehiyon, Angkor Photo Festival and Workshops, Hong Kong International Photo Festival, Kuala Lumpur Experimental Film, Video and Music Festival, and DIFFUSION Festival.

For the rest of our Women in Film and Photography 2025 programme, visit here.