Dude, I missed the screening of this, pare. (Sorry, I’m kidding.)
Seriously, I feel really bad I wasn’t able to watch the screening of Give Up Tomorrow last July 27 and 29 at Cinemalaya.
July 27th, I had already planned that trip to Tagaytay, and July 29th, a Sunday, was my rest day.
Give Up Tomorrow is a multi-awarded documentary by producer Marty Syjuco and director Michael Collins, who chronicle the story of Paco Larrañaga, a 19-year-old student who was accused (along with six others) of kidnapping, raping and murdering sisters Marijoy and Jacqueline Chiong in Cebu on July 16, 1997.
Even as 40 witnesses (including Larrañaga’s teachers and classmates at the Center for Culinary Arts in Quezon City) testified under oath that he was hundreds of miles from the crime scene, Paco and his co-accused were sentenced to death by lethal injection in February 2004.
On June 24, 2006, capital punishment was abolished in the Philippines, and in October 2009, Paco, a Spanish citizen, was transferred to the Madrid Central Penitentiary in Soto del Real, Spain, where he is due to serve his life sentence until 2038. By then he will be 61.
Then and now: Paco in a Manila jail (above) and recently in Spain (below) where he was allowed to watch the screening of the movie with his family.
Give Up Tomorrow hopes to prove the innocence of Paco Larrañaga, while exposing “a Kafkaesque extravaganza populated by flamboyantly corrupt public officials, cops on the take, and a frenzied legal and media circus. It is also an intimate family drama focused on the near mythic struggle of two angry and sorrowful mothers who have dedicated more than a decade to executing or saving one young man.” (Source)
I’m really hoping they will screen this again in Manila as two screenings at the CCP are really not enough.
If there’s anyone who knows of any future screenings in Metro Manila, please let us know.
To know more about the documentary, go to http://www.pacodocu.com/
Originally published at Chuvaness.com. You can comment here or there.