Birdshot

The film about the life of a young woman from rural area of the Philippines. She lives with her father who wants to prepare her for adulthood and teach her to be self sufficient. The world turns out to be far more complicated and dangerous than she can imagine at her age. Her actions will eventually draw the attention of local authorities. She and her father appear as victims of a police force whose priorities are at odds with the interests of the community. Rather than spelling out every detail, a subtle symbolism carried the events along as we are allowed, for the most part, to draw our own conclusions.

This movie portrays how things work in real life, in a very sensitive way. Excellent movie.

Birdshot, a coming of age story centered on a young farm girl named Maya (Mary Joy Apostol) who inadvertently shoots an endangered Eagle (Haribon) setting off a police investigation. On one hand, it's a coming of age tale and on the other hand, there's a good detective drama on offer here with Domingo (Arnold Reyes), a earnest rookie cop investigating missing farmers. While the two may be different genders and ages, they mirror each other in many ways. The story that has depth and beauty, juxtaposed by self effacing, unapologetic, honesty. A reflection, in many ways, of the stark Filipina outback, in which it is set.

Birdshot has a a slow yet steady heartbeat throughout that builds tension over each carefully, well-shot scene. It is a wonderfully slow paced movie that gives you time to chew on the underlying fat of what is so screwed up with the police force and the political scene in the region.

The plus side was the technical aspect, with the cinematography being the added bonus, perfectly capturing the mood in the isolated remote locations and the editing handled by the director himself.

If you're a sucker for fast paced mystery thrillers keep away from this movie. But if you desire thought provoking scenes loaded with powerful imagery without having topics shoved down your throat, seek this film out, and enjoy what it has to offer.

Fabulous movie, even more so when my Filipina wife shows me some related history around the storyline.

The corruption and arbitrarieness besides the lack of care for ethic and moral values shown in this film about the procedures carried out by the Filipino police must be a wake up call for the Government of this country to make amendments because of the image this movie projects to the World. The script is good, original, well structured and with a nice imagery as well as its unexpected ending to close paralell stories