Journalist Massacre Drama ‘Once Upon a Time in the Philippines’ Turns a Bystander Into an Accomplice at Busan Asian Project Market

By Naman Ramachandran

Naman Ramachandran

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A young woman pulled into the run-up to a political massacre slides from unwilling witness to accomplice in “Once Upon a Time in the Philippines,” the debut feature from E del Mundo inspired by the 2009 Maguindanao massacre.

The project is part of the Asian Project Market, which runs within the Busan International Film Festival’s Asian Contents & Film Market (ACFM).

Set in an invented locale that nods to the country’s south, the film centers on Sam, a 19-year-old who works at a gas station and gets caught up in killings by the private army of a political clan. In the aftermath, she hunts for her boyfriend, now missing and possibly a participant in the slaughter, and finds that one institution after another is bound up in the same apparatus of violence.

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