“Impressive document on the suffering caused by the erasure of a person’s death.”

It’s a sad fact of life that the further away a tragedy occurs, the less likely you are to hear much about it. A footnote in the newspaper, a small item on the evening news, quickly forgotten as it doesn’t directly or indirectly influence your own life. One such tragedy is the Maguindanao massacre, which occurred on November 23, 2009, in the town of Ampatuan in the Philippines. 58 people were brutally murdered and dumped in a mass grave, along with their vehicles, in what was a political assassination on a scale the world rarely sees. The wife of local politician Esmael Mangudadatu and her retinue, which included 32 journalists, were stopped by a group of thugs while on their way to file the candidacy of her husband in the upcoming gubernatorial election, and then summarily shot. Excavations of the mass grave turned up 57 bodies. Carl Joseph E. Papa tells the tragic story of the 58th person killed that day, journalist Reynaldo ‘Bebot’ Momay, and the fight of his family for recognition in the (mostly) animated documentary 58th, a harrowing account of brutality and injustice that leaves you with the question: why doesn’t the world know more about this?

A composite of Skype sessions, archival footage, and dramatic interpretation, 58th focuses primarily on Bebot’s daughter Reynafe, nicknamed ‘Nen’. Papa layers the materials with animation, and as with his 2023 film The Missing (which also played at IFFR) the style of choice is rotoscoping. This allows him to use the audio of interviews he had with Nen combined with the work of actress Glaiza de Castro playing her in animated Skype sessions of these same interviews. By doing so, it adds to the lyricism and drama of the film, which on the surface could be seen as a questionable approach for a documentary, but because the animation brushes over facial details the focus lies more on the voice retelling Nen’s experiences during the ordeal, from before the massacre, when a threat to her family was already felt, to hearing the news and then dealing with the painful aftermath. Because it is animated, this allows Papa to visualize her and her family’s path in dramatized scenes she recalls during the interviews. From visits to the gravesite, to a gruelling journey past decomposing bodies lined up in a morgue, the director manages to render the immense pain Bebot’s daughter went through much more effectively than if he had just used the interviews with her.

This creative approach proves very effective, as you can’t help but be sucked in by the grief and horror unfolding on screen in an account of both the massacre itself and the ordeal of the Momay family in what is a compelling story of injustice and brutality. Papa at times overdoes it; the animated blood spatter when the actual killing is shown is unnecessary in a film that is otherwise respectful, and the music by Arvy Dimaculangan, while beautiful in its own right, can at times be overbearing in an attempt to draw emotion. For the most part, however, 58th is a gripping account of an event the West barely knows anything about, which feels like an injustice in and of itself. But the real injustice unfolds as we get to the film’s final stretch and the court case against the perpetrators. The leaders of the Ampatuan family, political rivals of Mangudadatu and both judge and executioners in the massacre itself, are all sentenced to life imprisonment without parole for 57 murders. The 58th body, that of Reynaldo Momay, was never found and therefore not taken into account, leaving Nen and her family without a death certificate, without financial recompense, and most importantly without closure and a sense of justice. Inventive, confrontational, and shedding a light on a tragedy almost forgotten and barely known, 58th is an impressive document on the suffering caused by the erasure of a person’s death.