The first time Canadian filmmaker SJ Finlay visited the Philippines, he was only 8 years old.

Growing up into a documentarian and a filmmaker, he went back in 2014. After visiting the city of Zamboanga in the Philippines, which was under siege by rebel groups at the time – they destroyed a whole fishing village and a lot of the city – Finlay found that children were often recruited to fight against the government. It was usually to protect their tribal lands but also for more extremist views in the case of some factions.

From that experience, Finlay got the idea for his feature directing debut, Boy From Nowhere.

Based on true events, the movie is about a young boy, Gary (Gary Jumawan), who loses his father and home when his fishing village is burned down in an attack. He sets off inland to find his mother and her tribe.

Vulnerable and impressionable, he battles hunger and solitude, drifts into the wrong crowd and is brainwashed into becoming a child soldier for the local rebel faction until further loss leads him to find a more meaningful purpose in his life.

 

The film, which Finlay wrote, directed, shot and produced, also stars Nack Nack Abugyan, Balugto Necosia and Waway Saway.

The following are excerpts from our exclusive Zoom interview with Finlay. He tells us about how he managed to shoot his film “guerrilla style” on a limited budget and time in Southern Philippines using a cast of non-actors whose lives closely mimic the film’s tale of a boy caught up in a chain of events beyond his control.

What inspired you to do this film and how did you get involved, especially with Mindanao and Southern Philippines?

The Philippines is one of my favorite countries in the whole world to visit. The people are incredible. I think that they’re some of the friendliest people in the world, if not the number one. They should do friendliest rankings. People think Canadians are friendly but we’ve got nothing on Filipinos. They’re so friendly.

I used to do a lot of work with different charities and non-governmental organizations. I went through one a number of years ago where they sent me through Southeast Asia on a tour. I was doing photography and video for a bunch of different projects that they had in Thailand, Cambodia, Myanmar, and the Philippines.

I ended up in Davao in Southern Philippines. I even went to Zamboanga City, which [at the time] was in the spot you don’t go as a white person but Filipinos know, “Oh yeah, you don’t go there.” They had just been laid siege to by a rebel group.

I think it was the MNLF [Moro National Liberation Front] and they had burned down a whole fishing village, Badjao Fishing Village, and attacked the city. So there were refugees everywhere living in tents on the beach in different camps. They had really been traumatized by this event. I found out that there were child soldiers being used by the rebel groups. Those ones were Islamic. I did some filming, met some people and thought, wow, this is such an interesting story that very few people know about.

We’ve heard about child soldiers in Africa but we’ve never heard about them in Southeast Asia. But they happen. They happen in Myanmar and other places and they happen in the Philippines, in the South, too. It’s such a tragic issue that I thought, oh, it would be great to go into a film.

 

I did a short film and a music video. I actually did two music videos on that trip. As a side project, side note. One of the guys I did a music video for is nominated for this year’s Oscars for best soundtrack, for Everything Everywhere All at Once.

I did a music video for Son Lux and people were like, “Wow, the imagery is really amazing in Southeast Asia. The story seems really cool.”

Then what happened was I got an inheritance. My grandma passed away unfortunately but I got a new camera and I thought, okay, I’m going to take some money. Not a lot, but like $10,000 or $15,000 and I can make a whole movie in the Philippines with this amount of money. That would barely get you a couple of days in Canada or America but in the Philippines, your money can go very far because people are so friendly, they want to help.

I collaborated with the locals to tell a story that was true to life, that represented the plight of a few different people groups from Badjao fishermen to former gangsters, to the tribal peoples in the mountains and the valleys of Central Mindanao and collaborated with this idea on farming.

Food scarcity is a big issue there, that I wasn’t really aware of but just how easily manipulated somebody can be if they’re just hungry. They’ll trade so much just to feed their belly. That was so inspiring to me.

So I did a few trips over a couple of years, built those relationships, and started filming. Then, we filmed half the movie and I was able to go back after doing a project with World Vision in Nepal and finish the movie a few years ago.

We did post-production for a couple of years, the film festival run and now, it’s finally coming out. So, I’m super excited because it’s been in the process for a long time.

Most of your actors are non-actors. How did you recruit and cast them?

They all basically played themselves. Pretty much everyone in the film is just playing a version of themselves, not exactly their story but they are just being themselves.

I met Gary through the charity that I work with in Canada. He was one of the sponsored kids and he was in the community in Agdao, Davao City, and his brother was in the first music video that I did, the first time there so I got to know him then. I just auditioned a few kids.

Gary was so trusting of me and just willing to do whatever it took. He was so natural on camera. To be honest, the biggest thing is that his parents trusted me because not many parents would trust me to take this kid around and put a gun in their hand and run around in the jungles and stuff. The biggest thing was mostly actually his parents.

 

Nack Nack was a former gangster whom I met. He had been rehabilitated, given his life to God and was really in the process of changing his life around. He had such a natural charisma on camera and I told him, just treat Gary like your little brother that you never had.

To be honest, I think he is the best character in the film. He just really has this natural charisma to him and we really care for him even though we’re not sure about him as a character, whether we should trust him or not. Then, the villagers at the end are basically just playing themselves.

Datu Vic is the chief of that village. That village’s primary mission is peacekeeping between the corporations, the government, rebel groups, and tribal groups that feel like their land is being encroached on. Datu Vic’s message at the end is just like 100 percent the message of their tribe and what they’re passionate about.

You could call it God, destiny, fate, whatever you want to call it, that I met these people and they came together and basically, just played themselves. They were so natural on camera but also, it’s just the magic of editing, too. You get enough takes and you find the performance and you work with it.

You filmed this movie guerrilla-style in Bukidnon. Can you tell us more about the experience and the risk and challenges of filming there?

I met a few people along the way who told me it would be a bit risky. A few people who had relationships with the NPA through a family member or something. The New People’s Army is a long-running, more communist-leaning rebel group that operates in Bukidnon. So they are not a fan of the big corporations coming through.

For instance, we were driving up to Bukidnon and there was a truck that had been burned, a whole semi-truck that had been burned. It was on the side of the road. I got the camera out and took a shot and I put it in the movie.

People ask, “Where did this burning truck come from?” I was like, “Oh, that was really there by the real rebel group. They had just burned it down.” And it’s because they had gone through their territory without paying tax or paying reverence to the tribal lands that it was going through.

We also met members of the military who told me to be careful but I got the impression that I wasn’t in danger; unless I got caught in the wrong spot, I wouldn’t be kidnapped.

I had enough relationships with people in power, whether they were in the Talaandig Village or other friends that I had or friends through the church that I wasn’t really going to be in trouble with.

I did do a radio interview with the People’s Radio which they would all often listen to and they gave them a warning like, “Hey, Sam is here. He is going to be filming.” And the location around Songco Village, if you see a bunch of guys rocking around with guns, it’s just a video shoot, a film shoot, which is a risky thing to do, especially being on the streets and stuff. People driving by would think that they’re the real rebels and would get scared. So, there was that challenge but I felt the people were so friendly and really took care of me. I had enough good relationships that I felt safe. We also took precautions to stay close to the village and use actual villagers that other people would recognize so that they didn’t think the military was coming in or the rebel group was coming in.

How was your experience interviewing the former NPA guy in jail? What did you learn from him?

Good question. I just really learned about their plight and I really sympathized with it. I met different people in jail with different stories. It wasn’t about an ideology necessarily but it was about protecting the tribal lands and the rights of those groups.

In Canada, we have a similar problem with land rights where the First Nations feel that they have the right to the land and the government feels that they have a right to the land. In Canada, we have so much land we can just say, “Okay, well, you take some over here and we’ll take some over here.”

In the Philippines, there’s not very much land to go around. Way more people than in Canada and way less land. These conflicts are going to happen where? Can we mine this land that has tribal rights or not? Is it the government land or is it the tribal people’s land?

Just hearing about those conflicts and what they were doing to support the tribal people was really their primary concern. I didn’t want a rebel group that felt like the bad guys, necessarily. I wanted to understand their perspective.

I have a line where the rebel leader in the film is talking about mining companies from Canada, Australia or Japan. I wanted Canada in there because it’s true that we don’t know that we have mining companies in these countries. The local people are not happy with what they’re doing and we would feel that responsibility and just that connection a little bit more.

I put some of those things in the film that I talked about in that interview, just to help the viewer understand that these aren’t the bad guys necessarily but they also don’t see in terms of, “Oh, an 18-year-old can fight but a 17-year-old can’t.”

They think, okay, if you’re a young man, if you’re over 13 and you’re ready and willing to fight, here’s a gun. They don’t think in terms of human rights as well, which we think about in terms of what’s technically a child soldier is and that’s a huge violation of international rights.

What did you learn from the tribal chief whom you befriended and talked to?

I learned so much from Datu Vic. He told me to respect local traditions and practices and that I couldn’t just come in as a young, white guy with a camera and a lot of cash and try to take advantage of the setting and the local people. I found them to be so welcoming even though I was kind of young and brash, coming in there with this idea, “Oh, I wanted to shoot an action movie in your village.”

That seems so crazy but they were very welcoming and then, coached me on like, “Okay, if we’re going to be a part of this, we need some part. We need to tell our story. We can’t just make an action movie but it has to be sympathetic to both sides, and the main thing that we are fighting as a village is food scarcity, and traditional farming practices. So our identity is around farming. We are training our young men to be farmers. We’re training outcasts and other people to come and be farmers.”

So farming became a theme in the film that I wasn’t even aware of when I started and then we had to backtrack and change some things to go, “Oh, this food scarcity issue is so important to the whole film,” especially when you’re starting out as a fisherman and the fish are becoming less and less because of the fish dragging on the ocean floor, global warming and storms.

There’s more food scarcity at that level. The primary lesson I learned from him was respecting the local people and traditions to partner with them, to bring them on board into the project rather than telling them, “This is what we are doing,” and allowing their voice to come through in the message of the film.

That partnership really led to a beautiful co-partnership where this film isn’t written just by me, it’s not just my project that I’m impressing onto the Filipinos but we are partnering to tell a Filipino story through and through.

You shot, wrote, directed, and produced this film. But who translated the script from English to Bisaya and Tagalog?

Great question. I had a rough translation based on the lines and I could kind of tell. My assistant in the Philippines helped with a rough translation but then, I had a friend whom I played basketball with.

A side note is that I love basketball. I’m a huge basketball player. So, every time I go to the Philippines, I play all the time. That’s how I got connected with a lot of people and wanted to put that in the story. So a guy whom I play basketball with here in Canada is married to a Filipina and she’s from Mindanao. Her name is Jinky French.

She came over and we watched through the film and we fixed some of the subtitles and checked things. There are Filipinos everywhere. You can always find someone who’s ready and willing to help. I just had somebody locally here in Canada who helped me just dial that in.

Can you say something in Tagalog?

My three favorite words are, “sige, sige” [okay, okay], and then, if you’re playing basketball, “pasa, pasa” [pass, pass] and “tira, tira” [shoot, shoot].