EVERY SEPTEMBER 21, the Philippines is called to remember a date that changed the country forever. Decades later, that history continues to find its way onto the screen, where films transform the weight of dictatorship into stories of people who enforced, resisted, and endured it.
History can be told through many lenses, and film allows those perspectives to become deeply personal. Manila’s Finest, Edjop, and Liway revisit the Marcos dictatorship through different perspectives, capturing the country’s political turmoil from those who enforced order, those who resisted, and a child who simply grew up in its shadow.
Together, the three films turn a complex and painful history into stories that feel immediate, human, and impossible to forget.
The system from within
Set in 1969, Manila’s Finest offers a refreshing departure from the usual portrayals of the era by viewing this turbulent period through the eyes of the police force. The film follows four close friends in the Manila Police District (MPD): Capt. Homer Magtibay, played by Piolo Pascual; Officer Billy Ojeda, portrayed by Enrique Gil; Superintendent Severino Meneses, played by Romnick Sarmenta; and Officer Regalio Liwanag, brought to life by Joey Marquez.
At the center is Homer, who struggles to balance his responsibilities as a police officer, father, friend, and man guided by his own sense of morality, as what initially appears to be a gang war between the Sputnik Gang and Bahala Na Gang gradually unfolds into a deeper conspiracy involving government disruption, political interests, and institutional corruption.
The film further explores the growing tension between the police and military through Homer’s conflict with Lieutenant Danilo Abad of the Philippine Constabulary (PC), played by Cedrick Juan. His daughter Agnes, portrayed by Ashtine Olviga, also becomes involved in political demonstrations, including the Mendiola protest where Billy violently assaults a student, creating a moral breaking point between the two friends as Homer asks, “What if it had been Agnes?”
This question captures the film’s central tension between following orders and doing what is morally right, while the corruption surrounding MPD station commander Conrad Belarmino, played by Ariel Rivera, and his replacement Epifanio Javier, played by Rico Blanco, further exposes an institution shaped by political connections, nepotism, and competing interests, with journalist Walter Feliciano, played by Soliman Cruz, providing another perspective on those who document and challenge abuses of power.
Ultimately, Manila’s Finest is not simply a film about four policemen or a gang war in 1969 Manila, but about what happens when people become part of a system that constantly tests their principles. Homer is morally flawed, but his struggle to remain grounded amid violence, political interference, nepotism, and corruption makes his character a reflection of the institution he serves, showing how systems can corrupt people gradually by forcing them to compromise, remain silent, choose sides, and justify what they once considered unacceptable. Homer ultimately preserves his moral conviction even at the cost of his life, while Billy’s eventual decision to save a young student from abuse mirrors the film’s opening and suggests that redemption remains possible even within a deeply compromised institution.
The memories carried across generations
It was not uncommon to join the revolutionary movement during Martial Law as they fought for freedom and resisted dictatorship. Edjop follows the story of activist-turned-revolutionary Edgardo Gil Mirasol Jopson, popularly known as Edjop, portrayed by the ever-versatile Elijah Canlas.
Film Director Katski Flores takes a different approach by telling the story through Edjop’s eldest daughter, Joyette Jopson, a triathlete who distances herself from her father’s legacy by refusing to attend memorials and political events and instead devoting herself to her athletic career.
The film moves between Joyette’s present and memories of her father, bringing viewers back to the Marcos era, the First Quarter Storm, and the declaration of Martial Law. Although many of the events depicted are rooted in documented history and eyewitness accounts, Edjop does not seem primarily concerned with recreating history with complete “historical accuracy,” but rather with capturing its emotional truth. Through Joyette’s perspective, the film explores how the legacy of political repression can continue to shape families long after the events themselves have passed.
Ultimately, Edjop is not only a film about a revolutionary figure, but also about the daughter who inherited the weight of his unfinished story. Joyette’s struggle to distance herself from Edjop reveals that remembering history can be deeply personal, especially for families whose lives were permanently altered by dictatorship. By placing grief, memory, and inheritance at the center of the narrative, Edjop reminds us that the consequences of Martial Law do not end with its victims, but continue through the generations who are left to remember them.
The childhood within four walls
Some of the most painful stories about Martial Law are not about the people who fought in the streets, but about the children who grew up in its shadow. Released in 2018, Director Kip Oebanda’s Liway follows Dakip, a young boy raised inside a military detention camp with his parents, Day and Ric, during the final years of the Marcos dictatorship. Rather than burdening Dakip with the full weight of the political reality around him, the film allows us to experience repression through his innocence, where the prison is not yet a symbol of political persecution but simply the only world he knows.
At the center of Dakip’s world is his mother Day, played by Glaiza de Castro, a political prisoner who tries to give her son a childhood despite having little control over their circumstances. Through songs, games, and stories about an enchantress named Liway, Day creates an imagined world beyond the prison walls, giving Dakip something the dictatorship cannot completely take away: his wonder and freedom to imagine. Yet the distance between what Dakip sees and what the audience understands makes the film more painful, as the bars surrounding him, his mother’s fear, and the violence of the dictatorship gradually reveal a childhood that should never have been considered normal.
What makes Liway especially powerful is its reminder that the brutality of Martial Law extended beyond political prisoners and into their families, shaping childhoods, relationships, and memories. The film brings history back to a human scale, asking us not only to remember that people were imprisoned but to understand what that imprisonment meant for the children who grew up alongside it. In its ending, as Dakip becomes the very same director of the film, Kip, and carries his mother’s stories into filmmaking, Liway transforms memory into an act of preservation, ensuring that the stories of those who endured repression are not confined to the past.
Martial Law is a painful chapter of Philippine history, but its stories cannot be buried with the past. Manila’s Finest, Edjop, and Liway remind us that dictatorship is remembered not only through dates and names, but through the lives it disrupted, the people who resisted, and the generations left to carry its memory. To remember is to honor those who suffered and resisted, confront the truths that power tried to silence, and ensure that the violence of dictatorship is never forgotten, denied, nor allowed to happen again.