Finding the forgotten along the Elephant Paths

Bernadette Soriano

It starts with a path you’re not supposed to take.

The grass is wet from last night’s rain, each blade bending under the weight of your footsteps. There’s no signpost, no pavement—just the faint indentation left by others who dared to walk this way before. If you look closely, you can still see the echoes—mud pressed into familiar shapes, a candy wrapper snagged in the weeds, the rustle of something small retreating deeper into the green. In these traces, Elephant Paths finds its first story: not of grand heroism, but of quiet persistence, of carving one’s own way when the roads meant to guide you have disappeared.

A town that fades in the cut

Some disappearances happen with fanfare: a demolition crew, an official notice, a ceremonial ribbon for what comes next. Others happen like a clumsy jump cut. One day you’re walking home, and the establishing shot is gone.

“One time I went to my barangay and the town hall was just gone,” says Joshua de Vera, 23, the Bulakenyo filmmaker behind Elephant Paths. “Sometimes when I go home, the places I remember, they’re just not there anymore. What replaces them doesn’t feel like it’s for people like me.”

That sense of dislocation—geographic, emotional, generational—becomes the film’s narrative spine. Four teenage misfits, navigating the erasure of their hometown, carve out a hidden sanctuary. Here, modernization is not the triumphant crane shot over a gleaming skyline; it drips in subtly, an invasive subplot erasing the familiar, forcing both characters and audience to notice absence. In that quiet tension, the film joins a cinematic conversation with Only Yesterday, Melancholia, and The Florida Project, works that honor the messy, tender persistence of youth.

Paths as metaphor and motif

The title itself draws from the concept of “desire paths”—unofficial trails formed by repeated footsteps. On screen, de Vera elevates this into a cinematic thesis: “In nature, elephants choose the safest, most direct route, and others follow. The path isn’t given. It’s made.”

These paths recur like Tarkovsky motifs, their subtle variations shaped by weather, light, and the footsteps upon them. They are at once literal shortcuts and metaphorical detours: routes through grass, through life, and through memory. In one dawn sequence, Lance (Jansen Magpusao) leads Maya (Cristine Ysobel Refulgente) through tall grass. The soundscape privileges wet leaves over dialogue, the camera gliding just behind their shoulders like a phantom observer in Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love. Intimacy and choice are mapped in the terrain itself.

Third spaces and cinematic tenderness

For de Vera, the true protagonist is not a person but a place: the third space. Not home. Not school. The undefined in-betweens where identity is quietly written. “Sometimes it’s a café, sometimes a hideout, a sidewalk, a place to breathe,” he says. 

These spaces are captured with a cinematographic sensitivity akin to Chloé Zhao’s Songs My Brothers Taught Me: abandoned basketball courts become council halls, tricycle stops transform into confession booths, floodplains into stages for makeshift birthdays. Filming entirely outdoors during the storm season, the production embraced unpredictability as part of its mise-en-scène. “We’d just be on standby and then run to set when the weather calmed down,” de Vera laughs. “It was chaos, but beautiful.” Like Beasts of the Southern Wild, nature asserts itself as both adversary and accomplice, shaping how the story unfolds.

Autobiography without sentimentality

At the core is Lance, a teenager who feels “betrayed by the world.” De Vera admits Lance mirrors his own younger self, navigating rejection, infrastructural inaccessibility, and the quiet indignities of growing up in a rapidly changing town. “My journey home was exhausting: three vehicles, a long walk. I constantly questioned why there couldn’t be a simpler route. Infrastructure wasn’t made for ordinary people, so we made our own path.”

Surrealist elements allow the film to explore themes of displacement, bullying, and invisibility, transforming absence into presence. Elephants no longer roam the Philippines, yet their metaphorical footprints remain: traces of courage, persistence, and self-determination. The director and cinematographer, Ren Strahano, “trauma-dumped” memories of their hometowns into the film, shaping its visual language with authenticity and emotional resonance.

Holding the frame as the world changes

Though a final student film, de Vera calls it his “first real one,” situating him among indie auteurs whose capstone works became career foundations: Chloé Zhao, Destin Daniel Cretton, Barry Jenkins. His vision extends beyond representation; he seeks a reframing of youth’s place in society: “I hope the youth aren’t always on the margins. I want to move them to the center.”

When Elephant Paths premieres at Shangri-La Plaza’s Red Carpet Cinemas this September 5–7, 2025, audiences will sit in cushioned comfort. De Vera will likely observe from a third space of his own creation, just outside the frame, holding the world steady even as it reshapes itself.

From the first footprint to the last frame, Elephant Paths reminds us that the paths we forge—through grass, memory, or society—are never truly erased. They endure, waiting for those who choose to follow, to see, and to claim their space in a world that too often forgets.