Written and directed by Ramona S. Diaz
Featuring Maria Ressa, President Rodrigo Duterte, and Pia Ranada
Running time: 1 hour and 50 minutes

by Jaime Davis, The Fixer

“What do you do when the president lies?”

This is a question Filipino-American journalist (and one of Time magazine’s people of the year 2018) Maria Ressa wrestles with as head of Filipino independent news site Rappler, as she regularly battles Rodrigo Duterte, president of the Philippines, as he denounces the site as “fake news,” likens Ressa to a common criminal, repeatedly threatens to shut down the site, and taunts Rappler reporters with menacing threats (“If you end up dead it’s your fault.”) Despite this opposition, Ressa and her team work tirelessly to preserve free press and democracy as much as they can, uncovering injustices, conspiracies, and disinformation networks that pervade Filipino social media. Ressa, a Filipino-American partially raised in Toms River, NJ, endures regular and horrific cyberbullying, receiving numerous daily death threats and calls for her rape and imprisonment. She’s been arrested multiple times, all for telling the truth. She can’t trust the police to protect her so she employs her own security detail, ushering her from home to office and back each day.