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Cleaners

Name: Cleaners
Director: Glenn Barit
Released: 2019
Duration: 79 min

Representation Score

6.0/10

Fair

2019

Director

Glenn Barit

Runtime

79 minutes

Average Rating

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New Showbiz Analysis

Cleaners succeeds as a culturally specific coming-of-age story that rejects Western-centric animation norms. By grounding the narrative in the 2007-2008 Philippine academic year and specific regional milestones, it provides a meaningful, localized perspective. The film's strength lies in its subversion of social hierarchies. Instead of focusing on popular students, it centers on the underrepresented group tasked with classroom maintenance, using their labor to explore themes of purity and social superficiality. However, the film lacks explicit details regarding disability representation or specific romantic identities. While the experimental aesthetic suggests a departure from traditional storytelling, these elements remain more implied than clearly defined.

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Category Breakdown

Does Cleaners have LGBTQ+ representation?

Fair

The film uses experimental animation and non-traditional color coding for characters, which may support non-traditional gender and sexual identity expressions. While specific romantic pairings are not explicitly detailed, the aesthetic aligns with queer cinematic traditions.

How does Cleaners portray gender?

Fair

The narrative distributes ability to act across a diverse group of male and female students engaged in communal labor. By centering the narrative on the cleaners, the film challenges traditional adolescent social hierarchies.

How racially and ethnically diverse is Cleaners?

Good

The film shows high intentionality by grounding the story in Tuguegarao, Cagayan. It resists Western-centric clichés by presenting a localized, non-Anglo-Saxon reality through its setting and cast.

How does Cleaners represent religion and culture?

Good

The narrative engages with Philippine-specific milestones like Buwan ng Wika. It offers a critical view of institutional structures, using the act of cleaning as a metaphor for navigating social complexities.

Does Cleaners include disability representation?

Minimal

There is no explicit evidence regarding the depiction of physical or neurodivergent disabilities within the provided plot summaries.

Present on Screen

Strong commitment to localized cultural authenticity and regional Philippine settings.
Challenges traditional adolescent social hierarchies by centering underrepresented students.
Uses experimental animation to challenge conventional narrative structures.

Limited or Absent

Lacks explicit representation or evidence regarding physical or neurodivergent disabilities.
Queer identity and romantic pairings remain implied rather than explicitly detailed.

Official Synopsis

Different students from a high school cleaners group each deal with different pressures of being clean and pure while also discovering that the world is dirty and superficial to begin with.

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