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Engkwentro had a lot of guns in it too. Is that your picked pony, social unrest?
It’s just something that I felt needed to be told. It’s not—Oh, I want to make a film about poverty, or I want to make an edgy film with this and that in it, nothing like that. It’s really something that needed to be told kasi even when we were pitching the script, the initial reaction was “Nangyayari pa ba talaga to?” When we showed the film, we had reactions that went “Why are they showing this? How dare they show this!” to “Bakit nila ginagawa yan sa mayor namin, ang bait-bait naman ni mayor, hindi naman niya gagawin yan.” So basically, I did the film to challenge discussions or jumpstart them.

Your film has death squads, an evil mayor, and two teen characters for gang leaders in it. True story?
Sort of. Well, let me give you the background. I was doing a documentary in 2007 with RockEd, yung kina Tado, Kidlat [Tahimik] and Lourd [de Veyra]. We had to go to jails from north Luzon to Mindanao looking for different stories. It was very informal. In this facility in Davao, I met these two brothers, they’re names were actually Richard and Raymond, same as in the movie, but the film isn’t based on their life stories. It’s just that their situation inspired the film. I spoke to them for an afternoon.

They were 15 and 17 [years old], members of different gangs, and they were each being chased by the Davao Death squad. For me, what was striking about the whole experience was that I was 19. And these kids were 15 and 17, facing near-certain death as soon as they were released. Parang they had no hope for themselves, yung mentality na mamatay din naman sila.

And I really wanted to do a documentary about it kasi this is outside the justice system na. It’s really wrong but it’s happening everyday and nobody cares about it so I really wanted to do a documentary, but there are really strict rules on how you can interview minors in jails, [like] you can’t record even their voice, you only take notes, can’t videotape their faces of course, can’t get their contact details, and where they live because I needed to leave for Manila, and I wanted to go back to them after a year to do a documentary on their return to their community, but after that I couldn’t find them anymore because I couldn’t even get their full names, so there. Their situation inspired the film. And because I couldn’t do it as a documentary, I chose to do it as a narrative.