A THOUSAND CUTS

You can watch a FREE recording at this link of the special LIVE Q&A on SUN Oct 25 @5PM (PT) with director Ramona Diaz and Maria Ressa of A THOUSAND CUTS, moderated by Jose Antonio Vargas.

Official Selection, 2020 Sundance Film Festival
Official Selection, 2020 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival

A documentary on journalist Maria Ressa better be tough as hell, and Ramona Diaz’s blistering new work sure is. The cameras are always on–in newsrooms, hotel rooms, under the lectern lights–following the Rappler editor-in-chief and 2018 Time Person of the Year as she leads a brilliant team of reporters standing up against an authoritarian government set out to lock up the fourth estate. Ressa and her crew are on the front lines, asking critical questions of President Duterte’s extrajudicial killings of the poor, while fending off threats of virtual, verbal, and even physical violence from Duterte’s followers.

Diaz’s film captures that work, showing how behind-the-scenes of journalism is often the main stage of political warfare. One-by-one, the film introduces players on all sides, especially women who refuse to be underestimated, capturing an escalating tension that spreads from the palace to the streets. Unfolding with the drama are cross-cuts to an early interview Ressa did with a budding Duterte, an interview that takes on new meanings with each cut, meanings that testify to the courage and persistence of the Rappler team, as well as the fact that Philippine politics are indeed global politics.

–Brian Hu

Co-Presented by Philippines-U.S. Solidarity Organization of Southern California (PUSO-SoCal), Council of Philippine American Organizations