50 words

Three Filipina immigrant sisters return home to bury our father because the truth must be told about an abusive and violent man. We transform the funeral to reckon with the past, restitute our mother, and emancipate ourselves into the future. PIRANHA SISTERS documents the disruption of the legacy of violence to encourage choosing freedom over silence.

150 words

Three Filipina immigrant sisters return home to bury our father because the truth must be told about an abusive and violent man. What starts as a funeral becomes a reckoning that births a new story.

We utilize the eulogy at the funeral to share our story, to restitute our mother, and strengthen our sisterly bond as we emancipate ourselves into the future. Our training as scholars taught us how to analyze power; we show how to evaluate our own lives, and the power of choosing to speak. Burying him becomes a different kind of resurrection: girls who are hurt grow up to stop the abuse through truth-telling, undrowning, and vomiting, to breathing and finally coming up for air.

PIRANHA SISTERS documents the disruption of the legacy of violence, and asks what becomes possible when we choose freedom over silence.

300 words

Three Filipina immigrant sisters return home to bury our father because the truth must be told about an abusive and violent man. What starts as a funeral becomes a public reckoning to the world about the importance of bonding together as sisters.

We transform the funeral to surface what is condemned as not inappropriate: the revelation of our experiences as girls and as women to own our story and wrestle it away from lies. We restitute our mother, and strengthen our sisterly bond as we emancipate ourselves into the future. Burying him becomes a different kind of resurrection which is our emancipation as an undrowning, a vomiting, a breathing, for women finally coming up for air.

The word at the center of this film is emancipation. As teenagers, we emancipated ourselves from neglect, escaped a house of terror, and used our education to understand and finally narrate our own story. PIRANHA SISTERS frees our story to liberate a muzzled truth.

We are each women who analyze power as professors at the best universities in the world. We fashion a world where women with power walk and talk freely as a reality to aspire towards and achieve. PIRANHA SISTERS documents the disruption of the legacy of violence, and asks what becomes possible when we actualize what we learn and choose freedom over silence.