Give Up Tomorrow 2011

As a tropical storm lashes the Philippine island of Cebu, two sisters leave work and never come home. That same night, hundreds of miles away in Manila on a different island, Paco Larrañaga, 19, is at a party, surrounded by dozens of reliable witnesses. The missing women, Marijoy, 21, and Jacqueline Chong, 23, are described as pretty and innocent and come from a Chinese-Filipino family. Paco is said to be part of a prominent mestizo political clan that includes a former president. Beefy and tough, with a past of petty offenses, he fits the mold of a privileged thug, and the media circus that swarms his arrest and trial cheers the outcome—death by lethal injection.

The film uses this case to probe the deeper divides at the heart of Filipino society. It reflects schisms of race, class, and political power within a fragile democracy, where clashing families, institutions, and individuals confront one another in a struggle to convict or to free Paco. Each side offers an irreconcilable version of reality and justice, and those competing narratives play out against a backdrop of a legal system that wields capital punishment. The story suggests that the outcome exposes more about the culture that shapes verdicts than about the truth of any single crime.

Give Up Tomorrow is not the usual suspense tale of a man wrongly accused. Paco is not a conventional hero, and his lack of easy appeal challenges society—and filmgoers—to rely on facts rather than impressions, on evidence rather than prejudice. International voices—Amnesty International, the government of Spain, Fair Trials International, and the United Nations—stand firm in the belief that for more than a decade, Paco has been paying the price for a crime he did not commit. The film notes that some 42 people, including classmates and teachers from a culinary school he attends, along with photographic evidence, place him hundreds of miles from the grim crime scene.

Beyond a single evidentiary case, the documentary traces the roots of injustice to a broader cultural web. Rather than merely building a case against a man, the film reveals the interconnected complexities that permeate Filipino culture. It presents a fair view of the forces and institutions that arbitrate justice with a mix of capriciousness and malice, painting a Kafkaesque panorama populated by flamboyantly corrupt public officials, drug dealers, cops on the take, and journalists in thrall to — and in lonely opposition to — a frenzied legal and media circus.

At its core is an intimate family drama—the near-mythic struggle of two angry, sorrowful mothers who have dedicated more than a decade to trying to execute or save one young man. The narrative uses their pain to shed light on a larger social struggle, inviting viewers to weigh competing claims, examine the evidence, and consider how power, race, and class shape the pursuit of justice. The result is a documentary that feels both intensely local and universally resonant, a stark reminder that the lines between guilt and innocence, truth and perception, are often as contested as the headlines that drive them.