Making that sentimental journey with her father and grandmother to their ancestral homeland after fulfilling a childhood dream of playing in the FIFA World Cup is a once in a lifetime experience which award-winning filmmaker Reina Bonta  documented with a handy camera and turned into a documentary short entitled, “Maybe It’s Just the Rain,” which premiered this month at the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival.

Evoking one’s emotions when thinking of the homeland, the 20-minute documentary takes the viewer to a trip central Philippines with her father California Attorney General Rob Bonta,  and her grandmother Cynthia Arnaldo-Bonta to an experience of living or reliving the stories of her Lola or grandmother in Tagalog, as she was growing up in the state.

It is intergenerational relationship of love of family, love of country, between Bonta and her Lola with archival videos of her childhood kicking a soccer ball, learning to count in Tagalog and singing Bahay Kubo and audio clips interspersed within the short film which follows her journey to the World Cup and the homeland.

In a FIFA feature  before the World Cup, Bonta said she grew up in their home with her Lola, who taught her about Filipino customs and values. “All Filipinos are proud, but she’s the most proud person of the Filipino culture,” she further said describing her Lola as an activist because “she fights for the liberation of Filipinos, Filipino autonomy, and rights and justice for Filipinos in America.”

Bonta, born and raised in the US, is a member of Filipinas, the diasporic Philippine women’s national soccer team which played for the first time in the FIFA World Cup with a historic win against host New Zealand. While the Filipinas team was prepping for its debut, its roster was a contentious issue in the Philippines.

Writer Howie Severino has placed into perspective the issue as some said that those who weren’t born and raised here (in the Philippines) are not “real Filipinos.” In an excerpt of an article in 2023, Severino says, “Those who love this country from far away should be the first to dispute.”

Severino further elaborated that “in this diasporic age, when millions of Filipinos have migrated and live in over a hundred countries, being a Filipinos is more than a matter of citizenship, and no longer defined by where you live and even where you were born. It is a state of mind.”

That being said, nobody can judge Bonta and the rest of the women in the team of their love of their parents’ homeland having teared up and were sentimental as they sang the Philippine national anthem at the World Cup before millions worldwide.

“I think partnering with this incredible trip from which I was too take my Lola to our ancestral homeland together added a lot of context to what the World Cup actually meant for women for our very diasporic national team. And I think they created an interesting story that I want to talk about,” Bonta revealed during the Q and A after the movie preview as she acknowledged her Lola in the crowd.

She said: “The journey was so special to me in many ways and the key reflections that I remember pondering directly after that trip was how being in a physical place ignites memories for you in ways when you are not there physically, maybe a little harder to grasp.”

Right after the Filipinas team was eliminated in the group round, Bonta and her family flew to the Philippines, a trip that was already planned as she said, “Lola is getting older, so it will be a very special experience for the three of us.”

Bonta, her dad Rob, the first Filipino attorney general in California and Lola went to Dumaguete City and travelled to the city’s outskirts ,to the place where her Lola grew up and went in hiding during the Japanese occupation of the Philippines. “These sparked little fires for her and I think  this was the most treasured aspect of going there,” she recalled.

Bonta looked back at growing up and listening to so many stories from my Lola saying,  “I thought I collected this reservoir that I was learning so much just because we’d see a coconut tree, we’d see the home that she grew up in.”

Extremely grateful for making the trip, she said that “without being there in the Philippines those memories wouldn’t have passed down, and wouldn’t be passed down to my children and so forth.”

Bonta played soccer at Yale University like her father, who was captain at one point and led their team to an Ivy League championship, according to the FIFA feature. She studied to become a neurosurgeon but the film class she took as part of her requirement changed her career path which also took another turn when she took part in the tryouts, together with fellow California natives Olivia and Chandler McDaniels,  in the US conducted by the Philippine Football Federation.

The aspiring filmmaker was still at Yale when contacted about attending the soccer camp and she knew she had to finish college but it was a once in a lifetime opportunity to represent the country her father and Lola were born in. “The opportunity to represent the Philippines made the decision easy for me,” she said as she found it very meaningful.

In September 2022, she joined the Philippine team for a friendly with New Zealand at the Cal State Fullerton stadium with her parents in the stands. While the team made the first goal, they lost to New Zealand 2-1. Her first appearance as the team’s center back came in a friendly against Costa Rica in a training camp in that country.

The film shows pivotal moments in Bonta’s football career when she received the news of being part of the Filipinas lineup for the World Cup, a childhood dream while thinking her Lola was even happier that she represented her country, something that meant everything to her.

“I always dreamed of being a professional footballer and being at the World Cup and it felt surreal,” she told FIFA. “That moment, being told I was part of the 23, is one I will remember for the rest of my life,” Bonta said recalling the happy tears as she couldn’t get the words out for a while when she Facetimed her parents, who were concerned what was happening to her.

The team’s World Cup journey made that historic win on game one which also made every Filipino worldwide and especially those at the Wellington Regional Stadium in New Zealand, really proud.

Bonta’s journey to the World Cup is not without sacrifice, a  difficult choice but everything just fell into place. The FIFA feature which appeared before the World Cup said: “Reina was one of the best up-and-coming filmmakers in America with the world at her feet.”

The FIFA run made her pause film making and it was when her first film, “Lahi” was getting rave reviews when it premiered at the 2022 Hawaii Film Festival and got the audience award at the San Diego Film Festival,  to which the FIFA feature was correct is saying that “it was not the end for her and her scripts.”

People thought was crazy because pursuing a women’s football career is very difficul, Bonta said in the FIFA interview adding that m”oney is not the most important thing to me. My parents, those closest to me encouraged me to follow my heart.”

Looking back, Bonta said: “Thinking about your film in a way that it is important for young women to have reference and have digital memories of our accomplishment as women, as women athletes, was a big inspiration for bringing the camera, just a little handy camera to the World Cup and didn’t know that it would turn out to be a film.”

Having studied film, Bonta had told FIFA,  that it allows her to be creative, to tell stories, to fulfill a little bit of activism that has been so important to my upbringing with her Lola and her parents. “It’s something that I am very passionate about and would like to do after my football career is over,“ she added.