Kun maupay man it panahon

For his debut feature, Kun maupay man it panahon (Whether the Weather Is Fine), Filipino director Carlo Francisco Manatad chose a subject literally close to home. His native city of Tacloban, in the Eastern Visayas region, is regularly hit by devastating storms, and in 2013 Typhoon Hayan laid waste to much of the city. It is to the victims of this disaster that the film is dedicated.

The protagonist, a young man named Miguel, wakes up in a ravaged landscape. Destruction as far as the eye can see. In his quest to find the two people that matter most to him – his girlfriend Andrea and mother Norma – and, with them, to escape to a new life, he will traverse a world of desperation.

Thousands of people seek lost loved ones. The army attempts to bring order to the chaos, though their intervention is more authoritarian than benevolent.

Religion and myths contend to offer salvation. The attitude of the characters is perplexing, ambiguously pitched between cynicism and resilience, offering a provocative portrait of a population for whom calamity is a recurring and inevitable fact of life.

With keen empathy, dashes of dark, yet compassionate humor, and occasional flights into fantasy: why is a lion sitting on a roof, calmly spectating the mass suffering?

Manatad takes us on an extraordinary journey across a Boschian panorama of dire need and fortitude.

Giovanni Marchini-Camia