Whose Family: Filipino Domestic Workers in Hong Kong and Beyond
Community & Wider Programmes • Pay What You Can • Discussion • Relaxed
1 Oct 2026 (Thu) • 18:30 • Act One Cinema
There are nearly 400,000 domestic migrant workers in Hong Kong, most of them women from the Philippines and Indonesia. The lack of a legal cap on working hours, alongside the live-in requirement, subjects these workers to overwork and cramped living conditions, and leaves them more vulnerable to physical and emotional abuse.
This Pay-What-You-Can community screening reflects on the labour conditions of Filipino domestic migrant workers in Hong Kong and the UK.
Followed by a discussion over Hong Kong and Filipino snacks with Rose Ann Cotitob at The Voice of Domestic Workers.
The Model Family Award
Germany, Philippines | 2008 | Colour | 12’
In English and Filipino with English subtitles
Dir.: Lizza May David
Every year in the Philippines, awards are given to ‘the most outstanding Filipino workers and their families for their exceptional achievements’. Artist Lizza May David captures the irony behind this glamorisation of a national labour-export policy built on the disruption of family life.
We Don’t Dance For Nothing
Hong Kong, Canada, Philippines, USA | 2022 | 87’ | Colour
In Cantonese, English, Filipino with English subtitles
Dir.: Stefanos Tai
“There were so many fighting to be free, but I wondered — how many of them went home to dinner cooked by someone like me?”
We Don't Dance For Nothing follows H (Miles Sible), a Filipina domestic worker caring for a family of four in the city, at a time when hundreds of thousands of people are marching in the streets, demanding their freedom. H dreams of freedom too: a life where she can run away with her girlfriend Sampa (Xyza Cada). Her own life feels constantly on pause for the lives of others, a rhythm filmmaker Stefanos Tai renders through photo-montage — one that only finds its flow again when she is dancing.
Rose Ann Cotitob is a proud migrant domestic worker and campaigner with The Voice of Domestic Workers. She is originally from the Philippines and today works as a nanny and housekeeper in Hackney. In 2023, her employer brought her to London and she was later identified as a victim of modern slavery.
