Maguindanao Massacre Film Seeks Final Financing at Busan

E del Mundo's debut feature "Once Upon a Time in the Philippines," a drama built around the 2009 Maguindanao massacre that killed 58 people, is pitching for its final financing at Busan's Asian Project Market this week.

The market runs within the Busan International Film Festival's Asian Contents & Film Market (ACFM). Producers Kyle Nieva and Gian Carlo Librojo of the Philippines' Screen Asia, with Pamela Reyes, are co-producing with France's Piano Sano Films and Norway's DUOfilm.

The film centers on Sam, a 19-year-old gas station worker in an invented locale modeled on the country's south. She gets caught up in killings carried out by the private army of a political clan. In the aftermath, she searches for her missing boyfriend — possibly a participant in the slaughter — and discovers that one institution after another is bound up in the same apparatus of violence.

The historical anchor is stark. In 2009, armed men stopped a convoy of civilians, relatives, lawyers and journalists heading to file election papers in Maguindanao and killed 58 people, at least 32 of them journalists and media workers. The producers note that it is widely considered the deadliest single attack on journalists on record.

How does the director approach the massacre?

Del Mundo was raised under the weight of an event she says the Philippines has never truly come to terms with. "I came to believe that atrocities of this magnitude are rarely the work of a single monster. They are made possible by a multitude of people who obey, participate, remain silent, or simply stop asking questions," she said. "That conviction transformed the film into something closer to a forensic examination of myself within my own society."

She frames the film as "a coming-of-age story swallowed whole by the political reality of the Philippines," using the fictional Sam as her route into a collective trauma. Her focus is the fragility of a woman's mind inside a stifling life shaped by men, and the steady acceptance of the violence built into it.

"I hope audiences leave with the recognition that we belong to something larger than ourselves, and that something larger also lives within us, the good, the bad, and the ugly of it all," del Mundo said.

What does the production team bring?

Librojo, a broadcast journalist, carries a personal stake in the material. "The massacre cannot be treated only as a closed chapter in history. It reveals structures of political power, fear, and impunity that continue to shape Philippine society," he said.

Nieva said Screen Asia's earlier collaboration with del Mundo — the VR film "Yellowfin," which premiered at Cannes — gave the producers strong faith in her vision. Her method, he noted, approaches political violence through one young woman's experience rather than spectacle.

Co-producers on the project are Idris Lettifi, Marie Fuglestein Lægreid, Linda Bolstad Strønen and Ingrid Lill Høgtun.

Which labs and funds have backed it?

The project has accumulated an unusually long development record:

• Cannes' Cinéfondation L'Atelier and Producers Network
• The Venice Gap-Financing Market
• Locarno Open Doors, where it won a development award and a Sørfond award
• TorinoFilmLab, where it took the FOCAL Resource Award
• The Singapore International Film Festival's Southeast Asian Film Lab

Financing backing comes from the CNC and Institut français' Aide aux cinémas du monde, the Norwegian Film Institute's Sørfond, Visions Sud Est and Purin Pictures.

Now in advanced financing after years of development, the team is using Busan to close the remaining gap and meet partners ready to move the film into production. "After such a long development journey, we hope Busan can be the final bridge between development and production," Nieva said.