Manila Film Center Tragedy Revisited in ‘Heaven Help Us’ at Busan’s Asian Project Market

Busan’s Asian Project Market has selected “Heaven Help Us,” a politically charged drama from Filipino director Eve Baswel that confronts one of the darkest chapters in the country’s cultural history: the 1981 collapse of the Manila Film Center. The project is produced by John Torres, Jules Katanyag, and Danzen Santos Katanyag, with the team aiming to secure international partners, co-production support and pre-sales at the market.

Baswel said she was compelled to tell the story after connecting her own experiences in the precarious labor force with the workers who lost their lives during construction of the center. “Workers died building what was meant to be a showcase for the elite’s film festival, and the Marcos regime’s alleged response was to pour cement over the victims and proceed with the event. This image – the literal burial of the working class for the sake of spectacle – became deeply embedded in my consciousness,…