Watched this at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival.
Filmmaker Ramona S. Diaz creates an interesting topic of a documentary about the political aspects and the unrest happening in the country of Philippines which are interesting topics. Diaz's previous movie "A Thousand Cuts" was ambitious and strong but unfortunately, this one, while does offer some interesting political discussions and topics explored, it felt sloppy and poorly executed.
Many of the interesting themes of politics, corruption, campaigns, and political unrest are explored and there are some interesting moments that I did found ambitious. But the problems lie on that half of the themes and topics felt unfulfilling, unfocused and felt as if the filmmaker wasn't sure how to approach the topics. With the editing style, sound design and camerawork being solid, there were some editing moments and color presentations that felt degraded and a bit poor.
The formulaic approach causes some of the pacing to really drag. It's a shame because having known of Philippines politics, there are so many aspects that could have been explored well but unfortunately, this documentary wasn't really informative and I didn't really get an impact from seeing this.
Not a bad watch but it was disappointing.