Ma' Rosa

Brillante Mendoza's 2016 Filipino film follows Rosa, who runs a small shop in a poor district of Manila. She has four children, and to get by she and her husband resell small quantities of drugs. One day both are arrested. The subject is not the arrest but what follows. The police offer release for money, and the children have to find that money within one night. The narrative follows that single night almost in real time. Mendoza works handheld and with available light; the spaces are tight, the sound crowded and no scene is prettified. Jaclyn Jose leads and her performance won the best actress prize at Cannes. Who it's for: those who like Filipino realist cinema. Who it's not for: viewers expecting an ending in which institutional corruption is resolved; the film shows it as an order and does not change it.