Liryc Dela Cruz is a filmmaker and artist from South Cotabato, Philippines and Rome, Italy. Working across cinema, installation, and performance, his practice moves through the intersections of labor, migration, and postcolonial memory, engaging with decolonial studies and collective authorship. His debut feature film Come la Notte (Where the Night Stands Still) premiered at the 75th Berlin International Film Festival (Perspectives) and earned him the Golden Goblet for Best Director (Asian New Talent) at the 27th Shanghai International Film Festival. His works have been presented at Locarno Film Festival, Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival, Santarcangelo Festival, Mattatoio di Roma, École du Louvre/ Palais du Louvre, La Biennale di Venezia, and Film at Lincoln Center, among others. Dela Cruz is also the co-founder of Il Mio Filippino Collective, a transdisciplinary platform of Filipino domestic and care workers, artists, and community organizers dedicated to fostering spaces of care, resistance, and collective imagination. Through collaborative research, performances, and workshops, the collective builds encounters that challenge dominant narratives and make visible the intertwined histories of migration, labor, and colonial legacies.

IL MIO FILIPPINO COLLECTIVE is a collective of Filipino domestic and care workers, artists, community organizers and members of the diaspora based in Italy. Their mission is to collaborate, co-create and co-imagine with people and groups who are dedicated to fostering communities of resistance, care, and hospitality; environments where transformation, new imaginations and self-determination flourish. Their work and research are deeply anchored in the values of care, hospitality, anti-racist, anti-colonial resistance and decolonial practices. Through their flagship project, Il Mio Filippino, they highlight the effects of racial capitalism, colonial borders and the militarized control of bodies, minds, and communities. They are interested in creating encounters, workshops and performances that include grassroots community and the diaspora.