philippines

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There are over 12 million Overseas Filipino Workers (OFW) who reside in another country for a limited period of employment. Films that center around the lives of OFW are usually tear-jerking dramas, such as Anak (2000), Ilo Ilo (2013) and Caregiver (2008), depicting the hardship and injustice OFW face while working abroad.

Award-winning filmmaker Ramona Diaz, who gave us such memorable documentaries as Imelda, Motherland, and Don’t Stop Believin’: Everyman’s Journey, is now premiering her latest passion project, A Thousand Cuts, a documentary on internationally acclaimed journalist-activist Maria Ressa, founder of the online news site Rappler and Time’s Person of the Year in 2018. An outspoken critic of the government of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, especially of his “war on drugs” which has led to the violent killing of thousands of Filipinos, Ressa and a former staffer at Rappler, Reynaldo Santos, Jr.

With a running time of almost four hours, Lav Diaz’s The Woman Who Left, which won the Golden Lion at the 2016 Venice Film Festival, is one of his shortest films. The acclaimed director’s other award-winning films are epic in length.

There’s an emotionally powerful scene toward the end of Brillante Mendoza’s Ma’ Rosa in which Jaclyn Jose – who won the 2016 Cannes Film Festival best actress award for this role – quietly, wordlessly, weeps. Movingly conveying emotions only through her eyes, Jose sums up what her titular character has gone through in Mendoza’s Palme d’Or-nominated film.

The HFPA has donated $100,000 to UNICEF to assist with relief efforts in the Philippines following the devastation caused by Typhoon Haiyan. The donation will help in the recovery programs for the children affected by the typhoon, which displaced more than three million and killed more than 5,200 people in the Central Philippines since the catastrophic storm hit land on November 8.