PEPE DIOKNO: Young and breaking new ground

CEBU, Philippines - Before the slew of Metro Manila Film Festival entries that will dominate cinemas this December, Cebuanos will get the chance to watch an internationally-acclaimed indie film that’s set against a backdrop of a vigilante culture, something that Cebu’s past headlines can quite relate to.

Starting today until December 13, SM City Cebu Cinemas will screen “Engkwentro”, which won Best Debut Film in the Orrizonti (New Horizons) competition, the Luigi de Laurentiis (Lion of the Future) Award for a debut film, and the Best Director honors for Pepe Diokno at the 66th Venice International Film Festival last September.

During the PLDT myDSL Watchpad Red Carpet Premiere at the Marcelo B. Fernan Press Center, it was a pleasant surprise when April Rama of BigSeed Media introduced The Freeman to Direk Pepe. He was unexpectedly quite young.

The youngest participant in this year’s Venice Film Fest (the oldest and one of the most prestigious filmfests in the world) is a 22-year-old UP Diliman filmmaking undergraduate who used to write a weekly column that usually reviewed movies for The Philippine Star. In between fulfilling requirements to finally graduate this March, dealing with distribution outfits to market his film in Hollywood, attending to film fests and screenings all over the country, Direk Pepe is also back to the drawing broad for his second film. His first short film, “No Passport Needed”, was nominated Best Short Film at the 2006 Cinemalaya Film Festival, while his second short done in 2007 was “Dancing for Disciple”, a documentary about the famous dancing prisoners of Cebu.

The filmmaker details how he stumbled upon the premise of “Engkwentro.” “Nabuo siya dito sa Cebu at Davao. In 2007, I was doing a documentary on youth behind bars for the nationalist advocacy group RockEd. I had to go to jails from North Luzon to Mindanao. In Cebu, I went to the CPDRC, dun ako nag-shoot. When I went to Davao they have a drug rehab facility there. Whenever I go to jail, I make it a point to visit the minors. I met these two brothers who were members of two different gangs and being chased by the Davao Death Squad. I learned na meron din yun dito sa Cebu, yung mga vigilantes, pero not as systemized as in Davao.”

The brothers he met were aged 15 and 17 and were very sure they were going to die as soon as they got out of the detention facility because they believed they were being chased by the Davao Death Squad.

“To meet [people] who were just close to my age that time na parang wala ng hope or dreams para sa sarili nila, it really unsettled me. Their mentality na mamamatay na talaga sila really unsettled me and I knew I had to tell their story. My goal was to get people to question what is happening,” he says.

In hand-held camera style, “Engkwentro” follows the last 24 hours of two teenage brothers from warring gangs. The older brother (Richard) wants out of his group, while the younger brother (Raymond) is just being inducted by the rival gang. The climax arises in a midnight “engkwentro” where Raymond is tasked by his gang leader to kill his brother. All these happen while the state-sponsored City Death Squad prey the streets. It is topbilled by Felix Roco, while the rest of the cast members include Cebuanos Zyrus Desamparado and Eda Nolan, veteran director Celso Ad Castillo (who portrays a fictional mayor patterned after the notorious Davao Mayor Rodrigo Duterte) Ronnie Lazaro and Bayang Barrios.

But Direk Pepe pointed out that this wasn’t just about the reported Davao City Death Squad because vigilanteism was a “national problem”, which was why the characters spoke Tagalog, Cebuano, Ilonggo and Pangasinense to convey that this wasn’t just happening in a particular city.

To create rawness and grittiness on-screen, Direk Pepe employed a filmmaking style wherein the whole movie seems like a single, continuous take. “It’s the last 24 hours of the two brothers, so in order to capture the immediacy of the day, na talagang nandoon ka with them, there was no other way to do it but to create the illusion of one continuous camera shot throughout the film,” he explains.

“Engkwentro” was bypassed at the 2009 Cinemalaya Philippine Independent Film Festival where it originally competed, and it’s interesting to know how he became known as the “bad boy of Cinemalaya” after that because of not subscribing to a traditional production model such as the need to construct 2,000-square meter set in a squatters’ area in Sta. Ana near Makati and the hiring of some 500 extras. He justifies the construction as necessary to execute the film’s signature long-tracking shot and the especially-made narrow alleyways heightened the experience of pursuit.

When asked what project he was working on next, he unsurprisingly tackles another dangerous territory, more so in light of the recent events in southern Philippines. “Tungkol sa mga children warriors in Mindanao. Ito yung mga children na ginagamit sa mga Islamic insurgencies. My friend who is writing it is from Mindanao so again, I’m an outsider looking in. Hindi ako lumaki sa Mindanao or in urban poor areas, so I always rely on other people to help me.”

He also reveals that it will revolve around three children of war in Mindanao and he is going back to Davao for more research.

During the panel interview after the MBF screening, he was asked why he chose the subject of vigilante squad murders. He answered: “Bakit ka pa gagawa ng istorya kung ang dami-daming istorya na makikita sa paligid natin?”

His desire to make an impact through his socially/politically relevant films did not stem out of nowhere. Aside from the fact that he is an “Iskolar ng Bayan”, Pepe Diokno is the grandson and namesake of the fiery human-rights lawyer, former Secretary of Justice and anti-dictatorship icon Jose “Pepe” W. Diokno, who got jailed during martial law, and who served as the first human-rights commissioner under President Corazon Aquino. His father, Jose Manuel “Chel” Diokno, is also a human rights lawyer.

This is the film prodigy’s own way of continuing the struggle.