The great Ingmar Bergman once observed: “No art passes our conscience in the way film does, and goes directly to our feelings, deep down into the dark rooms of our souls.” His words continue to resonate today, carried by the evocative waters of the Venetian Lagoon towards the island of San Servolo, where, from September 10 to 12, the ONA Short Film Festival once again takes shape. At its core lies a belief in cinema as the ideal medium through which to convey messages that originate in sporting culture before transcending sport itself and reaching towards something deeper. Something capable, indeed, of touching the conscience, stirring emotion and reaching those hidden chambers of the soul. Of teaching us to open our perspectives towards other corners of the world, other communities and other individuals.

As has now become a tradition, we accompany this meaningful gathering with a dedicated editorial series. At the heart of this focus are director Alex Tiernan and his short film, ‘Ang Ritwal’.

As always, we like to begin with something we consider fundamental to every person we interview, just as it is to every filmmaker taking part in the ONA Short Film Festival: from childhood to the present day, what kind of relationship have you developed with the imagery and imagination of sport? In what ways has sport been, and does it continue to be, a source of inspiration in the way you see the world?

Alex Tiernan: “Growing up, I think I took sport largely at face value. I took it for granted, really. It was simply something all kids did. I grew up playing football and, because there was a basketball court at school, we eventually picked up basketball as well. Later, I played rugby and did athletics. But I was never more than average at any of these sports. For me, they were really just a form of entertainment. If I think back to the first major sporting event that made a real impression on me, it would probably be the 1994 World Cup. I was supporting Brazil, my mother’s team, and that year they won. Obviously, there was this sense of ecstasy in watching the team I had followed make it all the way to the final and ultimately win. But beyond the excitement itself, what really stayed with me was the sense of collective participation.

The idea that millions of people—that an entire nation—could be completely invested in something happening on a football pitch on the other side of the world made a profound impression on me. And when I think about my instincts as a filmmaker today, and about where my curiosity tends to lead me, I can see a strong connection with sport in that idea of vicariousness. Something very specific, performed by a single individual, can somehow encapsulate a much broader story, while an entire collective becomes emotionally invested in that moment. I think that relationship between the individual experience and the collective experience has stayed with me ever since.”

How, on the other hand, did visual storytelling enter your life? What does it represent to you today? 

Alex Tiernan: “If I can think about storytelling in a broader sense, oral storytelling was deeply emphasised throughout my childhood, on both sides of my family. We come from long histories of migration and displacement, and I think you often find within families shaped by those experiences a strong emphasis on storytelling as a way of preserving a sense of place when the ground itself has so often shifted. Stories about my grandparents and great-grandparents, and about the people they had known, were constantly being recounted. That kind of storytelling was very present throughout my childhood. It was only later that I became interested in visual storytelling and visual craft as, in some ways, an extension of that tradition.

My grandmother was a painter, and I think she recognised in me a certain ability to draw and paint. She used to tutor me after school, and when I eventually went to university, I studied painting and drawing for my degree. That was really my introduction to visual storytelling, but also to the idea that form gives shape to story. A medium such as painting or film doesn’t simply contain a story; its form is what allows meaning and narrative to be conveyed. I think that understanding has remained fundamental to the way I approach visual storytelling today.”

‘Ang Ritwal’ is an ode to the cultural and social significance of basketball in the Philippines: a significance that transcends sport itself and enters, in every sense, the realm of the sacred. Can you take us through the genesis of this short documentary and the creative process that led you to shape a narrative capable of elevating the ritual dimension of the Game within the country?

Alex Tiernan: “I would say the process was organic, to say the least. I came across this community somewhat by chance. I was travelling through the Philippines and exploring Manila, and I have what might seem like an unusual habit when I travel: I visit cemeteries. It isn’t a morbid fascination. I often find cemeteries very beautiful, but more importantly, the way different cultures deal with death and memorialise it can offer a fascinating window into the mindset of a place. If you visit cemeteries in parts of the United States, for instance, they can resemble immaculately manicured parks, often separated from the city. There is almost an idea of paradise as a pristine, distinct realm that you enter specifically for burial or to pay your respects. I once visited a cemetery in Algeria, near the Libyan border in the Sahara, which was almost the opposite. There was little more than a perimeter marked by bricks and fragments of broken pottery where you might otherwise expect headstones. There were no names or inscriptions. It suggested an entirely different relationship with death.

So when I was in the Philippines, I decided to visit Manila North Cemetery, where many of the country’s national figures are buried. I had been told that people lived there, but I wasn’t prepared for what I encountered. It really is a city within a city, a living community in the fullest sense, with multigenerational families occupying the mausoleums. At one point, I found myself in a space between the graves where a makeshift basketball court had been created. Some of the boys asked me if I wanted to join them and shoot some hoops. I was immediately struck by the juxtaposition: this completely ordinary, prosaic activity taking place alongside mausoleums and statues of weeping Madonnas. To me, the contrast was remarkable, almost surreal. But of course, to the people who lived there, there was nothing surreal about it at all. 

I think that was the moment when I first began drawing a connection between basketball—or sport more broadly—and much older sacred practices. Anyone who has spent time in the Philippines will notice that basketball is ubiquitous. It is everywhere. But I didn’t want to fall into the cliché of saying that ‘basketball is religion,’ in the same way people might say that football is religion in Italy or elsewhere. What interested me instead were the structural parallels between sport and practices such as religious ritual, burial rites, folklore and culture more broadly. They create a shared language capable of producing a sense of place, belonging and identity for those who participate: not only the people playing, but also those watching and everyone engaged in the ritual of the game. 

That was really the genesis of the project. I returned several months later during Undas, All Souls’ Day in the Philippines, without really knowing what I was going to film. Until then, I had generally approached directing with the feeling that you needed to know exactly what you were trying to create. ‘Ang Ritwal’ became an experiment in doing the opposite. I had an intuition, something I was curious about, something pulling me back towards that cemetery, but I didn’t want to impose a predetermined story on it. Through the relationships I had already begun forming with people there, I gradually pieced the project together. 

There was no conventional script. The structure emerged through encounters and interactions. The film is bookended by a ghost story that some children in the cemetery told me, which I reworked to frame the film. Most importantly, I wasn’t trying to make a documentary in the traditional sense: an exhaustive account of basketball in the Philippines, or an explanation of how this extraordinary community came to exist within a cemetery. Those subjects would require a very different kind of film. What I wanted was to create a portrait of the mythology of this place: the sensation of being there, and of participating in the interwoven rituals that give it its unique identity.”

At the heart of the film are two extraordinary settings: the Tenement, a place of worship in its own right and one of the most evocative playgrounds in global basketball culture, and one of the many cemeteries in Manila. What was it like to immerse yourself in these environments? And, in your eyes, what does the dialogue between them reveal?

Alex Tiernan: “That’s a great question, because I actually wasn’t familiar with the Tenement before making the film. As I was saying earlier, the process of shooting ‘Ang Ritwal’ was very organic. I wasn’t working according to a script, and I was quite careful not to impose a mythology on these places, but rather to draw one out of them. As much as possible, I wanted the encounters themselves, and my interactions with the people you see in the film, to take the lead. The decision to film at the Tenement, however, was very conscious and deliberate. I wanted a location that could somehow represent a coliseum. But once I arrived there, I realised that it was more than a coliseum. It felt almost like a cathedral: a cathedral of basketball. I wanted to create that visual contrast between the cemetery and the Tenement. The Tenement has this extraordinary physical presence. I imagine that playing there against the local players must be incredibly intimidating. You have storeys of parapets rising above you, with people looking vertically down onto the court. When there is a game and everyone comes out to watch, surrounding the space from above, it almost feels as though you are standing at the bottom of a well. 

The coliseum is a place of spectacle; the cathedral is a place of gathering and communal ritual. I needed a space that could embody both of those qualities and enter into dialogue with what I was already exploring within the cemetery as a place of memorialisation. But there is another connection between the two environments that became important to me. The Tenement was originally a multistorey parking structure. Like the cemetery, it wasn’t designed to support a community. It wasn’t designed to support life in the way it does today. And yet, in both places, people have created something extraordinarily alive. There is something about the transformation of the Tenement that speaks to the resourcefulness and resilience of Filipino culture: an entire basketball community, with its own history, has grown around a space that was never designed for that purpose. So for me, the dialogue between the Tenement and the cemetery ultimately exists there as well. They are very different places, but both reveal the ability of a community to appropriate a space, transform its original function and make life and collective ritual emerge within it.”

Your ‘Ang Ritwal’ will be screened on San Servolo before the ONA audience. What feelings arise when you imagine your work taking shape in such a singular setting, surrounded by the Venetian Lagoon? And what would you ultimately like the ONA audience to carry with them after experiencing the film?

Alex Tiernan: “Venice is one of the most iconic cities in the world, if not the most iconic. So, obviously, screening a film outdoors on an island in Venice is going to be very, very cool. But there is another connection that I find quite fascinating. If you contrast Venice with the locations you see in ‘Ang Ritwal,’ they could hardly appear more different. Venice possesses this extraordinary refinement and architectural beauty, whereas the environments in the film are far grittier and, frankly, largely unknown. They almost feel like opposite sides of the same coin. And yet, in both cases, we are talking about thriving communities that emerged in places which, on the face of it, were never really designed to support life. Venice itself is extraordinarily unlikely when you think about it: a city built on the sea, with very little land, which at one point became the centre of an empire. Somehow, something incredibly rich and vibrant emerged from those conditions.

That was precisely what struck me in the Philippines. The Tenement was not designed to house a community. The cemetery was designed for the dead, not the living. And yet, within the cracks, human resourcefulness and imagination take root. Sport, mythology and identity become almost like forces of nature: they begin to grow like vines around whatever structures are already there. So I really enjoy both the contrast and the parallel between these places. And if anyone in the audience happens to pick up on that while watching the film on San Servolo, I would find that quite amusing. As for what I would like the audience to take away from the film, in all honesty, I don’t want to impose any particular message on them. But if ‘Ang Ritwal’ prompts someone to reflect on sport beyond the physical act itself—beyond competition, pushing human limits or entertainment—and to think about it instead as a shared language, as an extension of all those other things that bind us together as communities, then I think the film will have done what I wanted it to do.”