Canon Decampment: Arnel Barbarona

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Tu Pug Imatuy

English Translation: The Right to Kill
Language: Manobo
Additional Languages: Cebuano, Filipino
Year of Release: 2017
Director: Arnel Barbarona
Screenwriter: Arnel Mardoquio
Producers: Red Motion Media, Kilab Multimedia, Yellow Kite Productions, Skyweaver Productions, Sine Mindanaw

Cast: Malona Sulatan, Jongmonzon, Luis Georlin Banaag III, Jamee Rivera, Jillian Khayle Barbarona, Henyo Ehem, Mentroso Malibato, Nona Ruth Sarmiento, Bhong del Rosario, Roweno Caballes, Charisse Lisondra, Louie Logronio, Barry Ohaylan, Buggy Ampalayo, Bong Artil

After Obunay and Dawin’s son Awit dies, Dawin leaves with his children to ask for mungbeans from their village datu. On their way back, Dawin is accosted by a group of soldiers, who also bring Obunay when she meets up with her family. The couple are tortured and humiliated, and forced to walk roped and naked through the forest. Lt. Olivar befriends them, dresses and feeds them, and promises to free them once they point out the hideout of Communist rebels. Dawin brings them to a solitary schoolhouse, where the soldiers hold the teacher, mothers, and their children prisoner. The cost of the struggle between the two contending forces, represented by the Manobo couple and the soldiers, will exact a toll that can only lead to losses all around.

The simple, almost fabular narrative of Tu Pug Imatuy may resonate as one of the many instances of abject cruelty visited on Filipino lumad or the ethnic non-Muslim populace of Mindanao. When events take an even more horrifically inhumane turn and the Manobo abductees (including the women and children peacefully attending to their education) have no other choice except survive by their wits and intimate knowledge of the local terrain, it may help to keep in mind the opening disclaimer, as well as documentary evidence during the end credits, that these events actually occurred. The movie makes no pretense about taking the side of the people caught in the crossfire between rebels and government soldiers, and acknowledges via a modicum of visual clues that, whereas the Communist fighters uphold the lumad’s right to uphold their ancestral territory, the government shamelessly enforces the interests of foreign mining companies, bent on extracting valuable minerals at the cost of displacing first peoples. The struggle is extremely dangerous for only one side, as it had always been through the years of colonizations, wars, and dictatorships, with the potential of genocidal extermination always present. Hence a film that provides a measure of hope in people’s determination and ingenuity may be a desperate gesture at denying historical reality; or it may be, as Tu Pug Imatuy suggests, a long-overdue call to arms, a challenge to a neglectful nation to recognize the most Filipino among us. The movie’s expert attention to pace, performance, costume, cast, and language ensure that it is a message we can no longer afford to overlook.

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