PH directors denounce pullout of West Philippine Sea documentary from local film festival
The Directors' Guild of the Philippines decried the decision to pull out the documentary Food Delivery, Fresh from the West Philippine Sea from the CinePanalo Film Festival.
"This decision signals a troubling trend in the suppression of artistic expression and the silencing of truth in our country," DGPI said in a statement on March 22.
On March 12, the film's creator Baby Ruth Villarama and CinePanalo festival director Chris Cahilig announced the film's removal from the local festival two days before the event.
According to its logline, Food Delivery "captures the valiant efforts of the Filipino fishermen, Coast Guard and Navy to deliver desperately needed food to communities, all while defending their livelihoods and national sovereignty in the contested West Philippine Sea." It's the only documentary in this year's lineup.
"Rather than celebrating the courage of our filmmakers in exposing these critical realities, the festival has instead chosen to suppress the truth—seemingly to avoid disfavor from powerful foreign interests," the directors' group said.
"This is not just an attack on one film but an alarming indication of how freedom of expression is being eroded in our society."
DGPI also lamented how multiple documentaries over the past year were censored. Alipato at Muog on the enforced disappearance of Jonas Burgos initially received an X-rating from the Media and Television Review and Classification Board before it got lowered to R-16. Meanwhile, Lost Sabungeros was pulled from Cinemalaya due to "security concerns."
The directors' guild called these actions a "growing pattern of intimidation that seeks to prevent Filipinos from engaging narratives that expose injustice and challenge prevailing power structures."
It also called on institutions, festivals, and the public to uphold free expression.
In their joint statement, Villarama and Cahilig said that external factors played a role in the decision to pull out the film.
Villarama also previously told PhilSTAR L!fe that her team is "working hard to plot the next course of action" regarding the release of Food Delivery.
The West Philippine Sea has an island called the Scarborough Shoal, a fish-rich reef 240 kilometers west of Luzon and nearly 900 kilometers from Hainan, the nearest major Chinese land mass.
China claims almost the entire sea, brushing off rival claims by the Philippines and other countries and ignoring the Permanent Court of Arbitration's ruling that its "nine-dash line" claim has no legal basis.
To press its claims, Beijing deploys coast guard and other boats to patrol the waterway. It also turned several reefs into militarized artificial islands.
CinePanalo entries were produced by Puregold, a supermarket brand that's part of the Puregold Price Club owned by the Chinese-Filipino Co business family. It's one of the country's richest families, with the company leaders Lucio and Susan Co having a net worth of $2.3 billion in 2024, according to Forbes Magazine.
