The Execution of P

Brillante Mendoza's 2009 Filipino film follows a young police student trying to raise money to marry his girlfriend. He accepts a job for two thousand dollars and only later understands that the job is to kill a woman. The film runs almost entirely across that one night and was shot handheld in the real streets of Manila. Mendoza won best director at Cannes for it, and the film was also the most contested work at the festival: some critics considered the length of the murder and dismemberment scenes an assault on the audience. Mendoza's defence was that he had to show the violence in real time so it could not be consumed. Watching it requires knowing that argument. Who it's for: viewers interested in Filipino realist cinema and films that ask uncomfortable ethical questions. Who it's not for: anyone unable to take long, graphic scenes of murder and dismemberment, or who will find this depiction of violence against a woman indefensible.