On the evening before Valentine’s Day in 2019, journalist Maria Ressa was arrested by the Philippine government and charged with “cyber-libel.” At issue was a seven-year-old article that her news website, Rappler, had published before such a crime as cyber-libel existed in the country’s legal code.
But while the PBS-backed film earned rave reviews since its Sundance premiere and will be seen in nearly every European nation, no broadcaster in the Philippines was willing to air it.
So for the first time in its four-decade history, Frontline has bought out a documentary’s distribution rights to make it directly available in the country most impacted by the film. “A Thousand Cuts” will be available free online in the Philippines starting March 13 on YouTube, as well as the show’s website.
“While making the film, you never think that it’s not actually going to be shown in the Philippines,” director Ramona Diaz said. “I’m naive, I guess. I was like, ‘Oh there’s still press freedom, someone will pick this up, right?’ I just never thought it would be this difficult to do.”
The false veneer of a free press is something that Ressa and others reporting on Duterte’s violent drug war encounter daily. They can publish dogged reports, as Diaz explained, but they never know when another court case will be thrown at them.
Two journalists are imprisoned in the Philippines — Lady Ann Salem and Frenchie Mae Cumpio — on what press freedom advocates say are trumped-up charges. “I’m luckier, I guess,” Ressa told The Washington Post from her home in Manila. “They’re still hanging a Damocles sword over my head. They’re making me run around and waste my time and our resources. But there are others who have it worse.”
“A Thousand Cuts” depicts this dilemma, and viewers see the toll it takes on Ressa and Rappler’s journalists. Reporters cry as they recount being targeted by the government, or seeing mothers find their dead sons in the street after police raids. In one scene, pro-Duterte demonstrators live-stream a protest outside of Rappler’s office, and the online comments fill with death threats. An unflappable Ressa, who has received nearly a dozen arrest warrants since 2018, dons a bulletproof vest to go about her day.
“It was a failure of my imagination to think they wouldn’t go as far as arresting me on trumped-up charges,” Ressa said. Her arrest emboldened her. “When you’re dealing with so much power, not speaking, not calling a spade a spade, makes you weaker, makes us more vulnerable.”
The film also follows Duterte’s allies, and depicts how one lie can quickly proliferate into a vast web of online disinformation, particularly in the Philippines, where people spend more time online than in any other country. “For the glut of information that we have, I feel people still don’t really know what the facts are.” Ressa said. “It is much, much worse than a decade ago.”
A 2018 Time Person of the Year who is a favorite target of pro-Duterte troll armies, Ressa has turned into an international ambassador for the fight against online disinformation and press restrictions in the Philippines. The country, which the Committee to Protect Journalists consistently ranks as the fifth most dangerous in the world for journalists, is led by a president who once declared “just because you’re a journalist, you are not exempted from assassination if you’re a son of a b----."
The pushback against “A Thousand Cuts” was not overt. Like most films, Frontline documentaries reach screens outside the U.S. through deals that third-party distribution companies strike with broadcasters in individual countries. But when longtime international distributor Cinephil tried to find takers for “A Thousand Cuts” in the Philippines, they encountered what the company’s managing director, Philippa Kowarsky called “a culture of silence.”
“It’s no longer an outright ‘no,’ which we’ve had in different countries with different films,” she said.
Kowarsky said no broadcaster gave a reason they wouldn’t take “A Thousand Cuts.” When Cinephil shopped around the same film in Israel, a bidding war broke out for rights to air it. But she noted that last year, the Philippine government shut down the nation’s largest broadcaster, ABS-CBN, which has produced critical coverage of Duterte’s administration.
“There’s a fear in the air and people don’t know how far they can walk, where the line is,” Kowarsky said. "Where can they endanger their livelihood and their lives.”
Other documentaries about press repression have had distribution trouble, too. Major streaming platforms such as Netflix, Apple and Amazon (whose chief executive Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post) reportedly passed on “The Dissident,” about the killing of Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, possibly to avoid offending the Saudi Arabian government. That film is now available on-demand, but for a fee.
When it became clear “A Thousand Cuts” — which aired on PBS stations in January and is streaming in the U.S. — wouldn’t be broadcast in the Philippines, Frontline stepped in to purchase the film’s distribution rights for the country. “The fact that it wasn’t going to be seen just didn’t seem right … They need to see this, they need to understand what’s happened,” Frontline executive producer Raney Aronson-Rath said. “We need to be able to create a way for these types of films to be seen in the countries that they’re about.”
There’s already evidence that Filipinos want to see “A Thousand Cuts.” The film streamed for 24 hours last summer, on Philippines Independence Day, and was viewed in the country nearly a quarter million times, shattering Frontline’s one-day viewership record for a new movie on YouTube. People in the Philippines have also been downloading pirated copies of the film in large numbers. Frontline hopes that many more people will watch after it starts streaming permanently, and free, next month.
“The only defense we have is to shine the light,” Ressa said. She is glad the film will find a bigger audience, and while she knows the attention could bring more danger to her and her colleagues, it hasn’t shaken the steely optimism that makes her such a compelling protagonist in “A Thousand Cuts.”
“Part of our job is to give the information to our people so they can make decisions about our democracy, the future they want,” she said. “It’s kind of like the Serenity Prayer. It’s not in my hands, but I can keep doing what we’re doing.”
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