I went into James J. Robinson’s First Light, winner of the Best Australian Director Award at MIFF 2025 and screened at this year’s Sydney Film Festival, thinking it was something of a dramatic crisis-of-faith story. The festival’s webpage describes it almost as a mystery film, with lead character Sister Yolanda uncovering a trail of corruption after suspecting her Church of foul play. This left me expecting a film similar to last year’s Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, a fun detective story underscored by religious conflict. What I watched, however, was much more special. Sister Yolanda, a middle-aged nun living in a small convent in Luzon, goes through less of a “crisis” of faith, but rather a gentle, melancholic reflection on it. 

The film’s central conflict begins with the death of Angelo, a young man killed in an “accident” on a construction site run by the influential Dela Cruz family. After speaking with Cesar, Angelo’s grieving father, Sister Yolanda—suspecting foul play—begins to look into a suspicious relationship between the Dela Cruz family and her church. She is quickly forced into a conflict of interest: she goes from a friend of the family, looking after Linda Dela Cruz’s ailing mother as part of her church duties, to distrusting them, seeking justice for this young man and his father as she reckons with her faith and social allegiances.

This is where some of the film’s clever detective elements make their appearance, leading audiences to distrust the Dela Cruzes. An exchange of gifts towards the start of the film sets these moments up: Yolanda gifts Linda a basket of fruit, and receives a bottle of imported sparkling water in return. The fruit is quickly tossed aside and left to rot, and we soon discover the company’s illicit involvement with the Church, as later on a father attempts to comfort a grieving Yolanda with a bottle from the same brand. The church, despite its warm lighting and spacious interior, becomes oppressive and claustrophobic as Yolanda receives the fancy, seemingly innocuous water.

Whilst the movie’s most fun moments lie in its small details, the part that truly leaves an impression is in the sheer scale of its filmmaking. Robinson makes the absolute most of the gorgeous scenery of Luzon, the environments so large and overwhelming that they’re almost intimidating. The seemingly endless fields, dotted with trees and wind turbines in the distance, allow this film to breathe, taking the audience on a peaceful, almost meditative journey. Whilst it can sometimes feel like the film’s central nuns are walking from point A to point B for the sake of it, this quiet wandering gives First Light time to work its magic on you.

And it really does feel like Yolanda’s not-quite-crisis of faith was allowed to gently unravel amidst this gorgeous natural beauty. It’s a clear change of scenery from her time in the Church, which is marked by shadows, dim lighting and the murky greens and greys of hospital rooms. Conversely, while she’s outside, walking with Sister Arlene—a younger nun who she serves as a mentor for—the blues of their robes shine against dazzlingly clear water, fields of rolling green hills, and the warmest, most clear skies I think I’ve ever seen captured on film. Yolanda, having lived for so long in a grey, constantly flooded convent that gradually “erodes [her] memory away,” is able to return to the land that she once lived on with her grandmother. Having stepped back from the Church, she is able to tearfully reminisce for the first time in what seems like forever. Her faith is reaffirmed by the world around her, through giving herself space and time to reflect on her own mortality.

What could very easily turn into an angry tale of grief and resentment instead becomes something equally tragic and melancholic, but something much more peaceful. Her relationships with the people around her end not in bitterness, but acceptance. She is able to help Sister Arlene come to terms with her desire to leave the convent and seek God outside its dusty walls. She and Cesar come to a kind of acceptance, agreeing that digging deeper into the Church’s corruption will only further his “cycles of pain”. And as Linda Dela Cruz grieves her own mother, Sister Yolanda simply embraces her, not in forgiveness, but in silent understanding. 

Yolanda’s final talk with Cesar is the centrepiece of the film, where he asks her if God is simply “our ability to digest pain, so we don’t pass it on to one another.” It’s a fitting final note for the film— the world is full of corruption, of pain, of injustice, and sometimes there’s nothing to do except keep going, keep trudging through the greyness to eventually get a glimpse of the bright blue skies. First Light ends, not with a resolution to Yolanda’s “crisis”, but with a haunting final shot as she walks away from the eerie stillness of the Church into the shadows and out of frame. Robinson doesn’t leave us with answers to the questions he asks, but rather with the opportunity to exist alongside them.