Vogue Philippines: Hilda Koronel Is Not Done Telling Stories About Survival

 

Vogue Philippines: Hilda Koronel Is Not Done Telling Stories About Survival

By Aylli Cortez

 

Photographs By Mark Nicdao

Styling By Anz Hizon

March 12, 2026

 

Multi-awarded actress Hilda Koronel brings decades of strong, woman-led storytelling into her latest leading role, Sisa.

 

Hilda Koronel is no stranger to playing survivors on screen. Following her film debut at age 13, she rose to acclaim in Lino Brocka’s Santiago!, a war drama set during the Japanese occupation. As Cristina, a girl left severely burned and unable to speak after a bomb blast, Koronel had no lines, and portrayed her role through physicality. The performance earned her the spot for Best Supporting Actress at the 1971 FAMAS Awards, making her the youngest ever winner in the category.

 

Fifty-five years later, Koronel returns from an over-decade-long hiatus in the titular role of Sisa, a historical thriller set during the American occupation. Her approach to embodying characters has stayed the same, but she now enjoys the freedom to choose her roles. “I would always look at the script first, and I would want something different,” she tells Vogue Philippines. “Sisa is totally different from other roles that I have done. So I want something exciting, something new, especially at my age.”

 

Written and directed by Jun Robles Lana, Sisa finds Koronel in a fugue state, crossing into a fortified camp where a group of imprisoned Filipina women name her after the “madwoman” in Jose Rizal’s novel. When the plot begins to unravel, the film itself seems to interrogate this assessment, as one scene offers glimpses into Sisa’s past: the cries of family, a call to arms, and a burning home.

 

At her Vogue Philippines shoot, Koronel recalls her discussions with Lana and why the role resonates. “I see in Sisa what was happening to the Philippines in 1902, during the Philippine-American War. She’s the embodiment of what was transpiring, what was happening to our people,” she shares. “I learned a lot of things from direk, explaining to me na pinag-aralan niya ito for how many years [that he researched this for many years]… And I said, ang dami kong hindi natutunan sa eskwelahan yan [there’s so much that I didn’t learn in school].”

 

In both films, Koronel is faced with the cost of living after her loved ones, bearing direct witness to their deaths as victims of war. Through her gaze, audiences feel the depth of a woman enraged, grieving, and gripping to sanity in a world gone mad.

 

Since she began in the ‘70s, Koronel has made a name for herself through raw portrayals of women seeking justice amid gender-based oppression and social adversity. Yet, there was a time when she hadn’t dreamed of becoming an actress, or of going by a different name.

 

Before she stepped into her screen identity, the veteran actress was born Susan Reid to a Filipino mother and an American father, a serviceman at the Clark Air Base in Pampanga, and was raised by her aunt in Pasay. She recounts the day she was discovered at 12 years old: “I was thrust into it,” she remarks. “I wasn’t looking for it. I guess it was just fate that somebody saw me in LVN Studios, walking around, and asked me if I wanted to be an actress.”

 

At her aunt’s encouragement, she became an exclusive contract talent for Lea Productions and adopted a moniker to distinguish herself from the ‘60s box-office star, Susan Roces. These decisions weren’t entirely hers to make, but as her career grew throughout her teenage years, Koronel learned to become her own staunch advocate. Among her non-negotiables, she insisted that she would balance acting with studying rather than dropping out of school. In a recent interview with Snooky Serna, she mentions writing her own contracts, as well as using her weekly television show Hilda as a personal training ground.

 

The drama series, which aired for five and a half years, saw her in constant collaboration with director and National Artist for Film Lino Brocka, with whom she credits for guiding her through emotionally tense roles at a young age. “I grew up with him. He taught me everything I know,” she says, the fondness clear in her tone. “It wasn’t just a mentor thing. He knew what my life was… All my sorrows, my fears, my anger, things that I have been through.”

 

The trust they established allowed Koronel to draw emotions from personal life experiences, translating them into powerful performances for the screen. She recalls the gentle way Brocka would sit down and brief her before a scene, sharing his vision for how it could play out while inviting her to give “more than a hundred percent” and make the role her own. “He knows yung kapasidad ko [what my capacity is], that I can still give more to it, even though I did not believe it myself. But he did. So that gave me courage more than anything else.”

 

Today, Koronel remains largely engrained in the public’s memory for two of Lino Brocka’s works: the 1975 social realist film Manila in the Claws of Light, where she plays the entrapped probinsyana Ligaya Paraiso, whom Julio Madiaga (Bembol Roco) travels to Manila in search for; and the 1976 drama Insiang, which sees the 18-year-old actress in the titular role, plotting her freedom from a household shared with a resentful mother (Mona Lisa) and her manipulative boyfriend (Ruel Vernal) in a story that was first presented as a Hilda episode two years prior.

 

Shot at Tondo’s Smokey Mountain, a 20-hectare landfill that enveloped the shores of Manila Bay until 1995, Insiang follows a young woman whose determination to survive is hardened by a series of verbal, physical, and sexual assaults. As Insiang weaves through muddy streets and makeshift shanties, her body cast against a gray sky or a glaring sun, she appears as a woman on fire, on the brink of realizing who she is and what she is truly capable of.

 

Koronel won Best Actress at both the FAMAS Awards and the Metro Manila Film Fest for Insiang, which became the first Philippine film to screen at the Cannes Film Festival in France. In 2013, Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project led the restoration of the two Brocka films in partnership with the Film Development Council of the Philippines, and both titles joined the Criterion Collection by 2018.

 

While the acclaimed actress counts versatile genres among her oeuvre, starring in romance films like Mike De Leon’s Kung Mangarap Ka’t Magising (a set she says she’d love to revisit) to feminist ensemble comedies like Crying Ladies and Working Girls, the roles she keeps coming back for seem to be embedded in stories of resistance, reclamation, and women empowerment.

 

Even after leaving the industry and moving to California in 2012, she continued to receive offers every year, but held on to her husband’s reminder that she should pick the ones she really wanted. For her first role since Olivia Lamasan’s The Mistress, which earned her a Luna Award for Best Supporting Actress, she returns to Philippine cinemas with Sisa, alongside cast members Eugene Domingo, Jennica Garcia, Jorrybell Agoto, and more.

 

Until now, the character of Sisa both excites and teaches her. “Gusto niyang makaganti. Gusto niyang maganda yung kanyang pamilya, yung kanyang country. And gusto niyang madagok yung mga oppressors niya [She wants retribution. She wants her family and her country to thrive. And she wants to overcome her oppressors]. I love it,” Koronel admits with a smile. “And you’ll find these are strong women na nandyan talagang lumaban [who are really there to fight].”

 

In the film, Sisa becomes a binding force among the women, whose division is best captured by Delia (Domingo), a grieving mother in sharp opposition to the American soldiers, and Leonor (Garcia), a widow entangled in a relationship with the commander. When certain truths come to light, horror morphs into honesty and a sense of solidarity, the Filipina ensemble uniting to choose dignity on their own terms, and Sisa remaining Sisa, now with ownership of her name.

 

As the period drama begins screening at over 175 cinemas nationwide, the celebrated actress extends the film’s message to women around the world: “Kayang-kaya nila yan. Tayo mga babae [They are capable of anything. Us women],” she remarks. “And dapat pagsamasama tayo, nagtutulungan tayo. Hindi tayo dapat nag-aaway-away, nasisiraan. [And we should always stick together, help each other out. Not quarrel or try to destroy each other].”

 

It’s a vision she hopes will continue to materialize, especially as Philippine cinema expands and sees Filipino actresses and directors gain wider, even global recognition. Because after decades in the industry, Hilda Koronel is not done telling stories about survival, but she is done letting others make her decisions for her. In a career of singular, unforgettable roles, she remembers the path it took to get there, and wherever she’s headed next, she’s taking us with her.

 

“I’m not just a storyteller. I make the story come alive. That’s my purpose,” she says. “So when you’re watching me, I’m going to bring you in. I’m going to make you cry. I’m going to make you laugh. I’m going to make you angry. And that’s who Sisa is, and that’s who I am.”

 

By AYLLI CORTEZ. Photographs by MARK NICDAO. Video by LIAM R. TANGAN and LEVY DY. Stylist and Sittings Editor: ANZ HIZON. Makeup: Zidjian Floro. Hair: Gabriel Villegas. Deputy Editor: Trickie Lopa. Digital Associate Editor: Chelsea Sarabia. Producer: Julian Rodriguez. Media Channels Producer: Angelo Tantuico. Media Channels Video Lead: Wainah Joson. Digital Multimedia Artist: Bea Lu. Digital Content Writer: Daphne Sagun. Assistant Photographers: Arsan Sulser Hofileña and Crisaldo Soco. Photo File Manager: John Philip Nicdao. Senior Lighting Technician: Villie James Bautista.

 

Link: https://vogue.ph/spotlight/hilda-koronel-profile-sisa/