One Death is Too Many

On Extra-Judicial Killings

The war on drugs has left thousands of families grieving and countless voices silenced. But every life taken is one too many. Through film and dialogue, this forum confronts the narratives that justified violence and asks how to resist forgetting, preserve truth, and seek justice.

Schedule

Short Films

Basurero

By Eileen Cabiling

Fiction | 2019 | 17 mins | Philippines

LOGLINE

A Filipino fisherman, desperate for cash, turns to dumping killed bodies into the sea for the current Philippine “Drug War”.

Iiyak ang Langit

By Kasharelle Javier and Monica Calderon

Documentary | 2025 | 18 mins | Philippines

LOGLINE

A grieving mother shapes light from wax and memory, holding together the fragile flicker of hope for those left in the shadows of the drug war that took her son’s life.

Alunsina

By Kiri Dalena

Documentary | 2020 | 41 mins | Philippines

LOGLINE

In Alunsina, Dalena explores the potentials and limits of engagement within a community facing trauma. Working closely with human rights organizations, she finds herself documenting the struggles of children and families in an urban settlement severely affected by the government’s war on drugs. She engages with another family whose child has resorted to drawing pictures to cope with such tragedy and again confront the complexities in communicating the violence they have witnessed.

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Other films we are screening

Ghosts of Future Past | On Martial Law

Southeast Asian Short Films Exhibition and Discussion

This year’s Active Vista Human Rights Festival: TRESE calls you to gather, remember, and resist, through powerful films that confront the haunting legacies of Martial Law.

Aswang

by Alyx Arumpac

When Rodrigo Duterte is voted president of the Philippines, he sets in motion a machinery of death to execute suspected drug peddlers, users, and small-time criminals. Aswang follows people whose fates entwine with the growing violence during two years of killings in Manila.

Delikado

by Karl Malakunas

DELIKADO follows environmental defenders Bobby and Tata of the Palawan NGO Network Inc and former El Nido mayor Nieves. They risk their lives in David versus Goliath-style struggles, stopping politicians and businessmen from destroying the Philippines’ “last ecological frontier”.

Ain’t I A Woman? | On Women’s Empowerment

Women’s bodies and voices have long been sites of struggle, contested, and controlled, yet continually resisting. This forum listens to stories that challenge patriarchy and affirm women’s place at the center of shaping just and equal futures.