In the context of the Philippines, the term “political prisoner” was deeply popularized at the height of the Marcos dictatorship from the 1970s to the early 1980s. The nature and condition of imprisonment, however, seems to be changing as the nature of the regime’s oppression varies. While the fundamental character from the Marcos dictatorship to the present regime remains unchanged, something peculiar as to how the phenomenon appears to us as images seems to be present.
Across Philippine cinema, political imprisonment appears not only as a legal condition but as a visual and ideological problem. From early documentary testimony during the Marcos dictatorship to contemporary films produced amid intensified counterinsurgency campaigns, images of detention reveal how the state names, frames, and disciplines dissent. This trajectory is examined through The Politics of Detention, a 1984 documentary released by Haring Ibon and KAPATID (Families and Friends of Political Prisoners); Orapronobis, a 1989 narrative feature directed by Lino Brocka; River of Tears and Rage, a 2021 documentary released by Kodao Productions and directed by Maricon Montajes; and Bloom Where You’re Planted, a 2025 feature-length documentary directed by Noni Abao. These films span four decades of political struggle and cinematic intervention.
My analysis will try to unite the images and depictions made by the above films regarding the nature of political imprisonment, particularly how the state faces its political detainees. Treatment here is seen as a superstructural symptom: How the state forces treat their political detainees reflects how the Philippines positions itself within the US-imperialist framework.
Armando Malay, one of the interviewees of The Politics of Detention, stated that the phenomenon of political imprisonment does not discriminate between classes and “spares no one who dares defy the US-Marcos Regime.” It is from this perspective that the documentary frames its subject matter, naming several people who have been jailed—from farmers and workers to company executives and university officials.
The first subject to be highlighted by the film is Fidel Agcaoili, a committee member of the Communist Party of the Philippines, who was the longest to be imprisoned: 10 years by the time of his interview. At the time, he was on trial for rebellion and subversion, similar to the cases of other detained members of the Communist Party, including Jose Maria Sison and Luis Jalandoni. Outside of the communists, other personages named in the documentary such as Rommel Corro (publisher of the Philippine Times), Horacio Morales (executive vice-president of Development Academy of the Philippines), Nemesio Prudente (president of Philippine College of Commerce), and a priest named Fr. Jose Dizon all faced similar charges.
Rebellion and subversion are charges taken as a violation of a law penned during the Cold-War-era red scare, painting communists as an “organized conspiracy to overthrow the Government of the Republic of the Philippines… for the purpose of establishing in the Philippines a totalitarian regime subject to alien domination and control.”1 Similarly, anyone who expresses anti-imperialist or anti-capitalist sentiments are painted as communists.
While being a fictional narrative, Orapronobis utilizes close realism to situate the context of the post-dictatorship Philippines. Fr. Jimmy Cordero (played by Philip Salvador), a political prisoner who was pardoned by the new regime, continues his activist work as a human rights advocate in light of the promises of democracy under the Corazon Aquino presidency. The film’s depictions of former political prisoners reflect the kind of politics brewing at the time. Some have chosen the parliamentary side, working with concerned groups and NGOs like Jimmy, while some of his former comrades chose to pursue the militant line underground.
Jose F. Lacaba’s screenplay treats the then contemporary politics of the left as they weigh their options during a moment of great political confusion. Unlike in the Marcos dictatorship, activists are not “forced” to commit to militant forms of activism under the Aquino faux democracy. The movie concludes with Jimmy deciding to participate in the underground struggle once again, after experiencing firsthand the new face of fascism after following the loss of a loved one. Militancy is not just a byproduct of necessity (as the only truly viable means against fascist oppression) but also of reason as driven by the inseparability of personal and political stakes: the militant activist as a humanist agent of history.
In this sense, depicting Jimmy the humanist (one who factors in the personal aspects of his political decision making) is an important counterpropaganda to the kind of image the enemies of the militant activist would use. Aided by “former” activists like Commander Kontra (Bembol Roco) in the film, these enemies depict activists as inhuman and sacrilegious through the semiotic legacies of the imperialist red scare and Satanic panic.
Brocka’s examination of former political prisoners and how their enemies depict them in Orapronobis is an important precursor to more recent contemporary cinematic treatment of the subject—such as the documentary River of Tears and Rage directed by the former political prisoner Maricon Montajes—matter as these concerns unfold on an accelerating scale in real life. The documentary follows detained human rights worker, Reina Mae Nasino, attending the wake and last rites of her infant, River. Montajes interestingly juxtaposes the feed from the livestream of the wake, exposing exchanges between online spectators with contrasting remarks: One side appeals for the police to respect the grieving parties, with some questioning about how the police treats the family of Nasino; the other side echoes state propaganda that casts activists as terrorists.
How the police forces treat Nasino, as captured by the documentary, can be seen as a glimpse of how the Philippine state treats political prisoners. Activists who face persecution from the state are commonly given unbailable criminal cases, such as possession of high-powered ammunition (as with the case of Nasino) or terrorist financing. Given the legal nature of the cases, the state can deny “politics” as motivation for persecution. Defense witnesses claim that the cases are trumped up from planted evidence—thus the pursuit comes not from any valid criminal claims but from the stature of the people accused as activists. Montajes was able to capture Nasino in moments of vulnerability and anger, as a mother whose unjust imprisonment led to her months of pregnancy behind bars, only to be separated forcefully despite appeals.
In recent years, the depiction of the activist—by extension the political prisoner—as painted by Philippine state propaganda has moved on from the image of the rebel, the godless heretic, towards the image of the terrorist. There is no question that the reactionary government is following the script of the imperialist US with the similar development of their boogeyman of communism. In 2025, the Philippine national budget allocated 1.95 billion pesos (33 million USD) on these campaigns through the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC)2. The NTF-ELCAC couples community livelihood programs with militarized red-tagging forums, promising financial rewards to those who point out alleged “communist” fighters and sympathizers. It is within this context that we can situate the subjects of Noni Abao’s Bloom Where You’re Planted. Running at 80 minutes, the documentary follows two activists dealing with state persecution and a journalist remembering a friend slain by reactionary forces. In the same spirit as the humanism in Brocka’s feature and Montajes’s documentary, Bloom Where You’re Planted depicts a counternarrative against the state’s claim of terrorism by highlighting the daily lives, worries, and hopes of its subjects.
With the lush and healthy lands of Cagayan Valley used as the film’s background, we first follow Agnes Mesina, regional coordinator of Makabayan People’s Coalition, as she carries out her activist work alongside her life as a mother and a friend. She is being pursued by the Philippine government with the charge of financing terrorism. The film then follows a peasant community organizer, Amanda Echanis, who was arrested with her one-month-old child just months after her father, agrarian-rights activist Randall Echanis, was brutally murdered. Highlighted in the film is Echanis’s attempts at creative work and returning to school while still being held in pre-trial detention for the illegal possession of firearms.
Cagayan Valley is a relevant terrain of political contradictions. While the presence of organizers such as Mesina and Echanis in this part of the Philippines signals a significant reach for activist work and resistance for the benefit of the people, especially the peasantry, the state’s response is further militarization and continuous NTF-ELCAC campaigns. The documentary depicts how the images of these two organizers, especially Mesina, are being branded by state operatives through scare campaigns, aligning her with communists that the Philippine government conflates with terrorism.
Across dictatorship, liberal democracy, and the present moment of intensified counterinsurgency, political imprisonment in the Philippines persists as a structural feature of governance rather than a historical aberration. These films demonstrate that the figure of the political prisoner evolves in name—from subversive, to rebel, to terrorist. The mechanisms of the name remain anchored to the same function: the neutralization of dissent that threatens entrenched power. What this cinema makes visible is not only the violence of incarceration but also the ideological work that accompanies it, shaping how repression is justified, denied, or normalized.
At the same time, these cinematic representations insist on a humanist politics that refuses the state’s dehumanizing narratives. Whether through Brocka’s militant humanism, Montajes’s intimate portrayal of grief and injustice, or Abao’s attention to everyday resilience amid persecution, these films assert that political commitment is inseparable from lived experience. In foregrounding care, memory, and collective struggle, they affirm that resistance not only survive imprisonment but redefines it. The political prisoner, as rendered in these works, stands not as a symbol of defeat, but as evidence of unresolved contradictions that continue to demand historical reckoning and political change.
- Republic Act no. 1700 of 1957, “An Act to Outlaw the Communist Party of the Philippines and Similar Associations, Penalizing Membership Therein and for Other Purposes,” Supreme Court E-Library, June 20, 1957, https://elibrary.judiciary.gov.ph/thebookshelf/showdocs/2/25077.
- Rainer Allan Ronda, “Proposed jump in NTF-ELCAC budget defended,” PhilStar Global, September 11, 2025, https://www.philstar.com/nation/2025/09/11/2471949/proposed-jump-ntf-elcac-budget-defended.