Fllm Review: Kaya

Writer-director-star Isabel Lamers makes an assured debut with a kinetic, emotionally perceptive short that understands identity can be both inheritance and something we have to claim for ourselves.

There is more than one kind of fight taking place in Isabel Lamers’ “KAYA.” Bodies collide, sticks snap through the air and fighters hit the mat with satisfying force, but the bruises that matter most are considerably harder to see. In this compact, unusually assured 11-minute drama, Filipino martial arts become the physical expression of a much more intimate struggle: the exhausting experience of being told, implicitly and explicitly, that you are not quite enough of any one thing to belong. The film had its world premiere at the 2026 Tribeca Festival, where it competed for Best Narrative Short.

Lamers, who writes, directs and stars, plays Nia Carlos-Koch, a half-Filipina kickboxer determined to earn a place on a prestigious Filipino Martial Arts team. It ought to be a straightforward underdog setup. Instead, Lamers complicates the familiar sports-film trajectory almost immediately. Nia isn't merely trying to prove that she can fight; she's attempting to prove that she has the right to occupy a cultural space that supposedly already belongs to her.

That distinction gives “KAYA” its sting.

Nia's kickboxing background has made her tough, disciplined and direct, but those attributes don't translate neatly into the Filipino martial arts discipline she is attempting to master. Rejected by formidable gym owner Angel (Kayley Carrigan), she begins secretly training with Malic (EJ Lipana), himself an outsider whose queerness places him at the margins of the same community Nia desperately wants to enter. Their alliance gives the short its warmest passages. Neither character needs the other to deliver a grand speech about marginalization. They recognize something familiar in one another, and Lamers wisely allows that recognition to emerge through movement, irritation, humor and trust rather than exposition.

The cleverest element of Lamers' screenplay is the way fighting technique gradually becomes character psychology. Nia initially approaches combat much as she approaches identity: by trying harder, pushing harder and believing that sufficient effort will eventually force the world to accept her. Filipino Martial Arts demand something different — adaptability, patience and an ability to redirect force rather than simply overpower it. Lamers has described that philosophy as central to Nia's development, and the metaphor translates cleanly without feeling diagrammed for the audience.

Outside the gym, the battle becomes more uncomfortable.

Nia's relationship with her mother, Maria, played with quietly effective severity by Gaye Angeles Piccio, exposes a different form of rejection. Expectations surrounding femininity, desirability and Nia's lighter skin become casual reminders that assimilation can operate even inside one's own family. The film is particularly good at recognizing that cultural alienation rarely announces itself with cinematic villainy. Sometimes it arrives disguised as advice. Sometimes it sounds like concern. Sometimes it comes from the very people whose acceptance matters most.

Lamers' performance is strongest in these smaller moments. She gives Nia the stubborn physical certainty of someone who knows exactly what her body can do, while letting a much less certain person flicker beneath it. Her anger feels defensive rather than performative; her determination occasionally looks perilously close to desperation. That tension prevents Nia from becoming merely another inspirational sports-movie protagonist.

And then, of course, there is the fighting.

The action has real impact. Fight choreographer and stunt performer Lauren Mary Kim constructs sequences that feel aggressive without becoming incoherent, while cinematographer Cesca Lee and editor Daniel Tong resist the temptation to chop the combat into meaningless fragments. The camera allows performers to move, strike, block and recover, letting physical storytelling remain visible. The result is particularly impressive given the short's scale: the action doesn't feel like something inserted to prove the production can stage fights. It feels inseparable from what the movie is trying to say.

If “KAYA” has a limitation, it is one shared by many ambitious shorts: its world feels larger than its running time permits. Angel, in particular, functions more effectively as an obstacle than as a fully dimensional character, while Nia and Malic's relationship could easily sustain considerably more screen time. The film sometimes races through emotional developments that deserve an additional beat.

But that complaint doubles as a compliment. “KAYA” feels less like a compressed feature than the convincing evidence that one could exist.

By the climactic confrontation, Lamers avoids the most obvious version of Nia's victory. The important breakthrough isn't whether she can perfectly imitate a fighting tradition or finally persuade someone else that she belongs. It comes when she stops treating the disparate parts of herself as problems requiring reconciliation. Her Western-influenced kickboxing and Filipino Martial Arts training begin to coexist, producing something that is hers precisely because it isn't culturally pristine.

That's where “KAYA” lands its hardest blow.

For a film built around combat, its ultimate argument is refreshingly uninterested in domination. Nia doesn't need to defeat one half of herself so the other can survive. She doesn't need to become more Filipino, less Western, more feminine or more palatable. She needs to recognize that identity is not an audition.

Lamers' debut is lean, physical and deeply personal without becoming self-important — a calling card with considerably more on its mind than showing off its creator's ability to throw a punch. “KAYA” understands that belonging isn't always about finding the door that finally opens for you. Sometimes it's about deciding you no longer require permission to walk through it.