"Independencia" was one of two films from Raya Martin that were screened as official selections at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, and was the first Filipino film to be selected for the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes Film Festival. He has since garnered critical acclaim in European and Asian Film circles. Film critic Antoine Thirion considered him one of the 50 best filmmakers under 50 in the 50th issue of Cinemascope: "There’s no Filipino director who can deny that he’s trying to portray the particularly tragic condition of their people. But only Martin has succeeded in advancing a contemporary image, solidly set in the present yet permanently floating between ages. The mixture of fantasy and determination, of naiveté and irony necessary (as in the exotic colonial/Hollywood pastiche of Independencia) is only his."