“Faith Healers” in the America they desire to heal

Dr. Randy Lizardo (2nd from left) executive producer of Faith Healers pose with members of the Council of Young Filipinx Americans in Medicine led by Antonio Moya (4th from left). (Photo by Xenia Tupas)

The film documentary “Faith Healers” follows the lives of immigrant Filipino doctors who cared and care for Americans navigating through a different culture and giving back to the homeland that needed them most. 

Debuting worldwide at the TCL Chinese Theater in Hollywood during the Manila International Film Festival, film director and scriptwriter Regina Aquino said, this was the right time to recognize and tell stories of Filipino doctors that heal America. It is an independent film and crowd funded through Seed and Spark.

The opening scene of a family praying the Hail Mary most likely gave reference to the film title and the drive of our Filipino doctors that they can heal to better serve their new-found communities and make it in the United States,  especially in the Maryland and Washington DC area.

It tackles also the Filipino meaning of Kapwa which is shared identity and to care for fellow beings as our doctors in the US assimilate, become trail brazers of a culture still largely invisible in history books and the media. It is also about their shared humanity as caregivers of the world.

Dr. Randy Lizardo, the film executive producer, said that now is the perfect time we tell this story from the mouths of the people who are living. He added that “we create this not only to educate this generation of individuals but also future generations” and the direct impact of what’s going to happen to the next generation.

First Lady Liza Marcos and Philippine Ambassador to the US Jose Manuel Romualdez at the TCL Chinese Theater were part of the crowd who watched the world premiere of Faith Healers. (Photo by Xenia Tupas)

The life of Zorayda Lee-Llacer is brought into focus, how she and her husband Reynaldo, also a doctor, established a practice that paved the way for the next generation of Filipino doctors in a small town community that needed doctors and healers for its people.

In the Q and A after the screening producer Francis Abbey recalled her sense of community reminding everyone to be involved in the community, be involved in politics and advocate for one’s self and community to be seen and  be heard.

Her husband Reynaldo migrated to the US a year ahead because of the shortage of doctors and medical personnel at the height of the Vietnam War in the 1960s, at a time the US Immigration and Naturalization Act was enacted which allowed medical professionals to work in the hospitals.

As they built their family, the Lee-Llacers had a successful practice and and gained headway rising from the ranks to becoming leaders in the medical field and helped found the Philippine Medical Association chapter in their community. One of their sons Jason has become a doctor.

A number of doctors related their experiences in the documentary as they struggled to survive and excel in their own fields, founded cultural organizations, medical non profit and Catholic prayer groups, served their communities and the motherland through medical missions and at the same time, nurtured their growing families.

In the film where highlights of the Filipino history in the US were mentioned, Abbey said that “all  of these things I am learning as an adult and I think these are important. As one historian said; if we don’t tell our story, someone will tell it for us and that’s why it is important to have these stories recorded.”

Gem Daus of the University of Maryland Asian American Studies Program said that “on a policy level, it hurts the Philippines, they lose the nurses they lose the teachers and the US continues to be central point of all the resources coming here.”

“While It might be good for individual families, it leaves those countries in need, those folks in the Philippines because they need doctors and nurses too, ” Daus said adding “that’s not to say I don’t celebrate the nurses, the doctors and so many mentors and people I look up to in those professions.”

Citing the advantage of the US, which Daus described as a former colony that has become a colonizer, the Filipinos speak English and can be trained so the country does not have to pay so much for the costs when they brought those professionals.

He added that the years of colonization made it so difficult that many Filipinos have to figure out what’s this idea in theirvhead, how did it get there, is it serving me, is it serving my community because the last thing where the colonizer leaves is the mind.

The second generation of Filipinos in the film admitted they only understood and not able to speak the language because of the need at that time to assimilate as much as possible and the need to blend in.

Lizardo, who also has a doctor parent and active in medical missions to the Philippines  shared a different take on the brain drain which  began in the 1960’s. He said “we don’t see it as potentially negative. It has been positive viewing it as recirculation and the return” referring to the medical missions and assistance the doctors like himself, to such far flung communities in Samar.

“Even though I met that patient for the first time, it was as if I was speaking to my family to my ancestor  and it pained me to know that she was not being helped  and when I was able to help her,  what I was doing made sense,” the young doctor narrated as he became emotional.

Lizardo also said that stories need to be recognized and told so other people can hear about it and if we know our history and where we came from, it is almost that there is a tie that brings us back together.

Aquino stressed the need for Filipino representation which is not seen on stage and on film her win the US, stories of specific communities being told, adding that ”one of the things that artists of color, artists of different under represented communities say, that if you want to see your story, you have to tell it yourself.

She said that immigrants don’t write down their experience and that she does not have an idea what her single mother went through immigrating here, what she endured coming to a new country, working and forging a new path with blind faith that it will work out for her child’s future.

Philippine First Lady Liza Marcos pose with Los Angeles’ first responders and heroes of the recent wildfires at the red carpet event with Faith Healers Director Regina Aquino (extreme left) and MIFF 2025 Chair Omen Ortiz (5th from left). (Photo by Xenia Tupas)

“This is trying to reclaim that immigrant story that has been forgotten because immigrants are so busy working and so they don’t think that that story is important. But such is an integral part of the filipino American psyche and I think that is where we are missing, we are so hungry for connection to Filipino culture,” Aquino emphasized.

The film director said that the connection lies in the documentation of the immigration story,  what the people ahead of us left behind and what they hoped to build, informs of who we are and stay connected to our culture, our motherland and our roots.

First Lady Liza Marcos and Ambassador Jose Manuel Romualdez, who is featured in the film, joined the moviegoers in the film screening after the red carpet event which gave tribute to the first responders of Los Angeles, most of whom with Filipino roots.

Also present in the film screening were top government officials from the Philippines such as Department of Tourism Secretary Christina Garcia-Frasco and Department of Trade and Industry Secretary Cristina Aldequer-Roque and their undersecretaries.