Rodina Singh and the love that refuses to die

In her new film Multwoh (Patay na Patay Sa’yo), the filmmaker behind Drag Den channels loss, longing, and quiet defiance into a love story that refuses to fade, and a statement about who gets to tell their own stories.

There’s a quiet resolve in the way Rodina Singh speaks. Not the kind that demands attention, but the kind that survives despite the noise. She’s used to being questioned, misunderstood, or told that her femininity must first be justified before it can be celebrated. “Maybe for me, it was okay,” she says. “I’m used to it. I’m used to not everyone accepting my femininity.”

Her new film, “Multwoh (Patay na Patay Sa’yo),” a finalist at CinePanalo 2026, is a haunting queer love story that asks a deceptively simple question: Can a love story die if love itself refuses to? 

The film follows Marcel, a flamboyant soul played by Sassa Gurl, who dies before confessing his love to Miguel (Martin del Rosario). From there, the story becomes part romance, part ghost story, and part reckoning… not just with death, but with the silences that precede it.

For Singh, “Multwoh” isn’t simply a film about ghosts. It’s a reflection of how queer stories persist…  in fragments, in whispers, in the margins of an industry still catching up. “I’m confident we’re here because of merit,” she says. “I just hope we’ll be given the chance to show it, and prove it.” That quiet yearning,  not for validation, but for space, runs through both her voice and her art.

She has reason to feel both hope and fatigue. As the showrunner of “Drag Den,” Singh has seen how far representation can go, and how quickly the old walls rise again. “For the longest time, queer people have ruled in front of the camera, behind the camera, in production,” she says. “But why do we still doubt that we can effectively and successfully tell our own stories?” Her question hangs there, uncomfortably, like a ghost that refuses to leave.

Still, Singh believes in doors, the kind that don’t creak open halfway, but swing wide for everyone. “Once ‘Multwoh’ is shown,” she says, “not only will the door be half-open. It will be fully open.” That’s the quiet promise at the heart of her work: a belief that every story told in love, especially the ones long denied, makes the world just a little bit larger, and a little more alive.

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