“A Love Letter Across Generations”: Reina Bonta on Diaspora, Football, and Her Intimate Documentary Maybe It’s Just the Rain

October 1, 2025

With Maybe It’s Just the Rain, award-winning filmmaker and professional athlete Reina Bonta delivers a lyrical, emotionally charged debut that blends history-making sports documentary with personal narrative. The film, which made its world premiere at LAAPFF 2025, captures the Philippines Women’s National Team’s first-ever appearance at the FIFA Women’s World Cup; a landmark moment for a country and a diaspora whose pride has long transcended borders. But while the story is framed around this groundbreaking athletic feat, Bonta steers her lens inward, offering viewers a deeply personal journey that includes a return to her ancestral homeland with her father and her lola. In doing so, she weaves a moving tapestry of sports, memory, and intergenerational love.

“Maybe It’s Just the Rain is a short documentary film that follows my team, the Philippine women’s national team, and our journey debuting at the World Cup in 2023,” Reina explains. “It was the first time any Filipino team represented the country at the World Cup. And one of my favorite parts about that is that the women, despite a gross and historical lack of investment and resources, were able to do it before the men.”

For Reina, the film began not as a professional project, but as a personal archive. “I actually didn’t know anything I shot would turn into a documentary. I recorded everything for the purposes of home archive, potentially for women in the future, to kind of document this journey from an inside perspective at the World Cup. It wasn’t until after, when I was looking through the footage, that I thought, we have a story here. It’s complex and nuanced and can be made into something that should be shared.”

That intimacy pulses through every frame. Woven alongside footage from the pitch are tender moments from a family pilgrimage to Dumaguete, where Reina’s lola grew up. “They made incredible sacrifices,” Reina shares. “My Lola lived through a war and survived it, for me to be able to represent the Philippines on the world stage, doing what I love, playing a sport that my father introduced me to when I was three. So the gratitude I was feeling reached far past the bounds of the film.”

The world premiere in Los Angeles marked a full-circle moment for Reina. “Definitely the most special part of our world premiere was the opportunity to experience it in community. My family is from the Bay Area, but everyone was able to make it for the screening. My Lola was there. Watching something on a large screen in silence in community -a magic kind of appears in the air, and glitter falls onto everyone. And some parts were so personal that I didn’t know if they’d be received as funny or moving to others, but hearing laughs and seeing folks wipe tears from their eyes? That was deeply meaningful.”

Throughout the film, Reina grapples with dual roles: as director and as subject. “Some of the beauty of the footage was that it was never meant to be seen by anyone but my family. It felt really intimate and authentic. There was never the added hurdle of knowing I was going to be showing this to wider audiences or worrying about how I would be perceived. That allowed for a genuine story to be told.” This duality is deeply shaped by her relationship with her lola, whom she credits as both a guiding force and artistic muse. “My Lola is the most grateful person to ever bless this planet. In true Filipina fashion, she’s also the most proud of her lineage and all Filipinos. She’s written me so many love letters throughout my life, and I’m so grateful that she received this work as a love letter back to her -a proclamation of love.”

Reina hopes the film inspires others, especially younger generations, to engage with their own family histories. “I think our generation has this unique connection to our grandparents while living in an increasingly digital era where our attention spans are so short. I feel a deep responsibility to know my Lola’s stories because I fear they’ll be lost if I don’t listen and document them.”

Her advice to other filmmakers? “You’re never going to know everything about your grandparents’ lives, and that’s okay. But it’s still important to try. For me, I just used a camera I had and started bringing it to conversations. Then I dug into a big box of Super 8 tape we had in the basement and digitized it. That became another narrative thread. Remove the barriers for entry. You don’t need producers or funding to start. Just begin.”

What’s next for Reina? She’s currently writing a narrative feature film based on her experience as a professional footballer in Brazil. “It’s set in this feverish football world where football is a religion. It follows a queer love story between two women who meet on a soccer team. I’m excited to expand the kinds of women’s sports stories we see on screen. We’re in a cultural moment around women’s sports, and while it’s beautiful, we’re still far from gender equity. There’s so much more to say.”

Following its LAAPFF world premiere, Maybe It’s Just the Rain screened at CAAMFest in San Francisco and made its international debut at Marché du Film de Cannes in France. With its poetic fusion of sport, heritage, and love, the film cements Reina Bonta as a powerful new voice in diasporic storytelling; one who understands that sometimes the most radical act is simply bearing witness to where we come from.