The latest cartoon from DreamWorks Animation (The Wild Robot, Dog Man) is a psychedelic fantasy adventure – but it’s also the first major Hollywood film to draw on Filipino folklore. Grammy-winning singer H.E.R. and Liza Soberano provide the voices of Jo and Raissa, two schoolgirls who become best friends in the Philippines in the 1990s. Years later, Raissa is about to emigrate to the US, but before she can go, the two girls fall through a portal into a magical world of demons, witches and monsters. And if they stay there too long, their memories of each other will fade away. “So many times, young girls in movies and TV are portrayed as always talking about boys, or they’re princesses,” the film’s co-director, Joel Crawford, said in Variety. “I want my [Filipina] daughters to see themselves up on the screen, whether it’s in terms of culture, in terms of ethnicity, but also how they are as people.”
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