Please watch our film presentation online and join us for a Zoom discussion and Q+A with special guests including
Maria Ressa
Co-Founder, Rappler
Ramona S. Diaz
Film director and producer
Moderated by
Irene Khan
UN Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection
of Freedom of Opinion and Expression
The Zoom discussion is free to attend online, but requires advance registration, upon which all participants will receive an email confirmation, along with a link for attending the discussion. Please use the link below for viewing the film prior to the discussion and near the time of the event.
Watch the film on FRONTLINE PBS here.
With press freedom under threat in the Philippines, A THOUSAND CUTS goes inside the escalating war between the government and the press. The documentary follows Maria Ressa, a renowned journalist who has become a top target of President Rodrigo Duterte’s crackdown on the news media.
In 2016, outsider candidate Rodrigo Duterte upset the political establishment in the Philippines by winning the presidency and promising vengeance and violence. Within hours of taking office, bodies piled up in the streets. Rappler, the country’s top online news site, investigated the murders and revealed a government-sanctioned drug war targeting poor addicts instead of lucrative dealers. In an attempt to suppress independent reporting, Duterte unleashed a powerful disinformation campaign that spread like wildfire throughout social media.
Filmmaker Ramona S. Diaz follows key players from two sides of an increasingly dangerous war between press and government. Representing the journalists is fearless Rappler co-founder Maria Ressa who, despite arrests and harassment, continues to publish articles holding a lawless regime accountable. On the other side, influencers such as pop-star-turned-government-secretary Mocha Uson start incendiary social media movements and General Ronald “Bato” Dela Rosa spearheads a public execution campaign against addicts. As each side digs in, we become witness to an epic and ongoing fight for the integrity of human life and truth itself — a conflict that extends beyond the Philippines into our own divisive backyard.
On January 11th, A THOUSAND CUTS tied for Best Documentary at this year's IFP Gotham Awards.
Please watch this enthralling FRONTLINE PBS film here — and then join us for a Zoom discussion about the film in an online panel on January 26 with special guests, including the subject of the film and co-founder of Rappler, Maria Ressa, as well as filmmaker Ramona S. Diaz. The conversation will be moderated by Irene Khan, UN Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of Freedom of Opinion and Expression.
Panel Moderator
IRENE KHAN
Irene Khan is the UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression since 1 August 2020. She is the first woman to hold this position since the establishment of the mandate in 1993.
An internationally recognized advocate for human rights, gender equality and social justice, she teaches at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, and is co-author of The Unheard Truth: Poverty and Human Rights, which has been published in seven languages.
Ms. Khan was Secretary General of Amnesty International from 2001 to 2009. Under her leadership, Amnesty strengthened its work on political and civil rights, especially in the context of counter-terrorism and armed conflicts, while also expanding its mandate to include economic, social and cultural rights. The first woman to head Amnesty International, she launched its first global campaign to stop violence against women and girls.
From 2012 to 2019, Ms. Khan headed the International Development Law Organization (IDLO), the only intergovernmental organization exclusively devoted to the rule of law and sustainable development. In that capacity she co-convened the UN Conference in Preparation of the Review of SDG 16 in 2019, the High Level Group on Justice for Women in 2018 and the Conference on Rule of Law in Africa in 2016. She expanded programs on access to justice and championed Sustainable Development Goal 16 on peace, justice, access to information and effective institutions.
As Consulting Editor of The Daily Star in Bangladesh from 2010 to 2011, Ms. Khan covered human rights, democracy and gender issues and supported independent media. She was Visiting Professor at the State University of New York Law School in 2011 and Chancellor of Salford University in the UK from 2009 to 2015.
She began her professional career with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, working for 21 years at headquarters and in various country operations, including Chief of Mission in India and Deputy Director, Division of International Protection.
Ms. Khan collaborates with the Columbia Global Freedom of Expression program, including as a member of the Jury of the Global Freedom of Expression Awards. She was a member of the World Bank Gender Advisory Council, the UNAIDS High Level Panel on HIV Prevention and Human Rights, and the UN Global Compact Advisory Council. She sits on the governing boards of the Overseas Development Institute (UK), BRAC (Bangladesh) and Barefoot Law (Uganda).
Ms. Khan has received several awards, including the Sydney Peace Prize in 2006, for her contribution to human rights. Born in Bangladesh, she studied at Manchester University and Harvard Law School.
Panelists
MARIA RESSA
A journalist in Asia for nearly 35 years, Maria Ressa co-founded Rappler, the top digital only news site that is leading the fight for press freedom in the Philippines. As Rappler’s executive editor and CEO, Maria has endured constant political harassment and arrests by the Duterte government, forced to post bail nine times to stay free. Rappler’s battle for truth and democracy is the subject of the 2020 Sundance Film Festival documentary, A Thousand Cuts.
For her courage and work on disinformation and ‘fake news,’ Maria was named Time Magazine’s 2018 Person of the Year, was among its 100 Most Influential People of 2019, and has also been named one of Time’s Most Influential Women of the Century. She was also part of BBC’s 100 most inspiring and influential women of 2019 and Prospect magazine’s world’s top 50 thinkers. Among many awards, she received the prestigious Golden Pen of Freedom Award from the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers, the Knight International Journalism Award from the International Center for Journalists, the Gwen Ifill Press Freedom Award from the Committee to Protect Journalists, the Shorenstein Journalism Award from Stanford University, the Columbia Journalism Award, the Free Media Pioneer Award from the International Press Institute, and the Sergei Magnitsky Award for Investigative Journalism.
Before founding Rappler, Maria focused on investigating terrorism in Southeast Asia. She opened and ran CNN’s Manila Bureau for nearly a decade before opening the network’s Jakarta Bureau, which she ran from 1995 to 2005. She wrote Seeds of Terror: An Eyewitness Account of al-Qaeda’s Newest Center of Operations in Southeast Asia and From Bin Laden to Facebook: 10 Days of Abduction, 10 Years of Terrorism.
RAMONA S. DIAZ
Ramona S. Diaz is an award-winning Asian American filmmaker whose films have screened at Sundance, the Berlinale, Tribeca, the Viennale, IDFA, and many other top-tier film festivals. All of Ramona's feature-length films — Imelda (2004), The Learning (2011), Don’t Stop Believin’: Everyman’s Journey (2012) and her latest film, Motherland (2017) — have been broadcast on PBS, on either the POV or Independent Lens series. Motherland won an award at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival and had its international premiere at the 67th Berlin International Film Festival. It was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for best Documentary, a Peabody Award, and a Gaward Urian Award from the Filipino Film Critics.
She has received funding from ITVS, Sundance, CAAM, Tribeca, Catapult Film Fund, Chicken & Egg, MacArthur Foundation, the IDA, Cinereach and Creative Capital, among others. For the past four years, Ramona has been a film envoy for the American Film Showcase, a joint program of the U.S. Department of State and the USC School of Cinematic Arts that brings American films to audiences worldwide. She has conducted master classes and production workshops all over the world. Ramona was awarded a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship and was inducted into the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences (AMPAS) in 2016, and in 2017 received a Women at Sundance Fellowship and a Chicken & Egg Pictures Breakthrough Filmmaker Award. She is a current recipient of a United States Artist Fellowship. Ramona is a graduate of Emerson College and holds an MA from Stanford University.