Canadian rom-com documentary sparks conversations around race and belonging

A new rom-com documentary, filmed in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, sparks conversations around race and belonging.

Director Joella Cabalu’s First Comes Love: Nakabingwit has its Ontario premiere at the 2026 Reelworld Film Festival on Oct. 25.

The film follows three Filipina–white couples whose whirlwind love stories unfold alongside hard conversations about race, belonging and what it takes to stay together. The couple’s stories are interspersed with Cabalu’s story, performed by actors Gabrielle Jacinto and David Lennon.

Cabalu told YourCityWithIN that she wanted to make a rom-com that she wished existed when she was growing up. While she loved films such as When Harry Met Sally or Before Sunrise, she didn’t see herself or her experience in these films.

“Not only in the racial makeup…but also in the types of conversations that these couples were having, and how they were moving through conflict,” Cabalu said.

While the film focuses on the Filipino-white couples, Cabalu hopes many people can relate to the themes.

“My hope is that it sparks conversations with couples and people in many different kinds of relationship dynamics, that doesn’t just have to be romantic relationships, of how they talk about difference and how they move through that, and are able to sit with that discomfort and tension, and still be committed to each other and to growing with each other,” she said.

Toronto-based Justine Abigail Yu, founder of Living Hyphen, a community and multi-media platform exploring what it means to live in between cultures, is featured in the film with her partner Dominic Pollard. People may remember Yu from a viral video on anti-Asian hate she posted in the summer of 2020 after a racist encounter on the grounds of a Toronto school.

Cabalu and Yu knew each other before the pandemic through Yu’s work with Living Hyphen.

Around the time of the Black Lives Matter and anti-Asian hate rallies in 2020 and 2021, Yu posted a question on social media asking people who were in relationships with white partners about the kind of conversations they are having. Cabalu saw the post and contacted Yu about her idea for a documentary.

“So it was a really heightened time around racism and issues around race, and while we’ve been having these conversations prior to this moment, there was something about this particular time that made it so the stakes felt so much higher,” said Yu. “The conflicts we were having were more heated in ways that they weren’t before because of everything that was happening around us.”

Actress Gabrielle Jacinto plays Joella Cabalu in the film. Photo: National Film Board of Canada

The film’s title, Nakabingwit, is a Tagalog word that refers to catching a big fish, but colloquially, it means you caught a rich or a white husband.

Yu said her father hates the term Nakabingwit.

“Historically, Nakabingwit is somebody who has hooked somebody that’s in another league, and it does have this historic connotation of a Filipino woman catching a white man, and how that means you’re moving up in the world,” Yu told YourCityWithIN.

The word opens up a conversation.

“Why did that (Nakabingwit) even exist to begin with, and how can we rewrite these stories?” Yu said.

The film premiered at the Vancouver Film Festival, and Yu said she wasn’t sure what to expect. She attended the festival with Pollard — it was their first time seeing the finished film.

“At the beginning, we were very nervous to see what exactly made the cut,” said Yu. “But we loved it.”

Yu said she was particularly interested in hearing the parallels or intersections between her conversations with her partner and the other couples in the film.

Cabalu said the film has led to conversations within couples she knows.

“The overall sentiment, regardless of the racial makeup of the couple, was that it just sparked a lot of conversation,” she said. “It gave them an opportunity to really delve into their own power and privilege dynamics within their own relationships. So, that made me very happy.”

The film is showing at Scotiabank Theatre on Sunday, Oct. 25 at 10 a.m. Purchase tickets here.

See more about the film on the National Film Board website here.