Smaller and Smaller Circles

Raya Martin's 2017 Filipino film follows two Jesuit priests investigating the bodies of young boys found at the Payatas dump in Manila. One is a forensic pathologist, the other a psychologist; because the police do not take the case seriously they run the investigation themselves. The film joins a serial killer plot to poverty. All the victims are children who work at the dump and nobody is looking for them; the killer can move freely not through skill but through indifference. That is the narrative's real criticism. It is adapted from F. H. Batacan's novel. Martin is known as an experimental filmmaker and moves here into genre narrative; the result is formally more measured but the pace stays slow. Nonie Buencamino and Sid Lucero lead. Who it's for: those who like Filipino cinema and socially grounded crime films. Who it's not for: viewers sensitive to sexual violence against children and murder; the film treats these implicitly but plainly.