Nora Aunor stars, in what is often deemed her finest performance, as Corazon de la Cruz, a Filipina nurse. Living near the US Clark Air Base on Luzon Island, she dreams of a better life in the United States… until the unspeakable happens.Â
Directed by Lupita Aquino-Kashiwahara, Once A Moth is a long-lost, rarely-seen landmark of Filipino cinema, here miraculously salvaged and restored despite weather-worn elements and a missing first reel. A timeless, galvanizing, anti-imperialist classic conceived as a protest film against the unending occupation of the Philippines by foreign powers, it gives their wings back to those attracted and irrevocably burned by the flame of the American Dream.