On the Job: The Missing 8
A «baroque, excessive movie, which amused and literally conquered us»: this is how the Director of Venice 78 Alberto Barbera described Erik Matti’s On the Job: The Missing 8. Venice Film Festival taught us not to underestimate Filipino cinema. The Woman Who Left by Lav Diaz won Venice 2016. Matti’s feature is the sequel of On the Job (2013) and with Lav Diaz has in common the lenght (over three hours and a half), and the socio-political criticism. The protagonists of the movie are two pawns of the same corrupt system of power. The journalist Sisoy is a former supporter of the government and the local mayor, but he conflicted with him when he begins to investigate the disappearance of some colleagues. Roman, an inmate who has been released from prison several times to be used as a hitman, and sentenced for life for a crime he didn’t committed, wants to regain his freedom at any cost. Matti (former B-Movies cult director) defined the movie as «a choral work that seeks to analyze, through the disappearance of eight people, a reality the Philippines press never talks about» . A reality made of «gangster politicians, lousy journalists, murderous inmates». The director is not interested on «moral judgments», but on «understanding what lies behind the thinking of these characters, seeing their human side, not to glorify them but to really understand how they became what they are». Another opportunity to learn more about contemporary Filipino cinema, whose pearls are still too little known by Western audiences.
On the Job: The Missing 8
Philipine, 2021. Directed by Erik Matti. With John Arcilla, Dennis Trillo, Dante Rivero. Length 208’.
