(Spoiler warning)

Every finished film carries invisible ghosts—scenes imagined, rehearsed, and even shot, only to be left behind so the story can breathe. For Call Me Mother, director Jun Robles Lana revealed that some of its most ambitious sequences were ultimately sacrificed, not for lack of spectacle, but in service of the film’s emotional core.

One of the most surprising omissions involved a large-scale parkour sequence centered on Vice Ganda’s character, Twinkle. The scene was conceived as a frantic dash to get her child to the hospital and required extensive preparation and coordination. Lana said they spent “weeks planning and an entire day shooting” the sequence.

“It was a logistical beast… It was visually spectacular,” Lana said. Despite its technical accomplishment, the scene did not make the final cut. “But in the end I cut it,” he added, explaining that while the sequence worked on paper and stood out from a craft perspective, “it felt tonally out of place once edited into the sequence.”

The parkour scene was not the only bold idea that was left on the cutting room floor. Lana also shared that Nadine Lustre’s character, Mara, originally had an intense pageant training arc described as a “‘Squid Game’-style” sequence that leaned into heightened pressure and competition. Another scrapped concept featured the PBB Collab cast in a stylized “samurai confrontation,” adding a theatrical flourish that ultimately did not align with the final tone.

Taken together, the deleted scenes suggest a version of Call Me Mother that could have leaned heavily into spectacle. But Lana said restraint was a deliberate choice.

“Ultimately, filmmaking isn’t about flexing the spectacle or showing off your technical range as a director,” he said. “It’s about honoring the story above all else, even if that means leaving your most ambitious work on the cutting room floor.”

By choosing intimacy over excess, Call Me Mother found its emotional balance, allowing performances, relationships, and quiet truths to take center stage. The unseen scenes may linger as compelling what-ifs, but their absence helped shape the film audiences see today.

Call Me Mother is still showing in cinemas.