International Award-winning “ASOG” finally premieres in the Philippines at the 20th Cinemalaya Film Festival.

An award-winning feature film, "ASOG,” depicting the lives of Sicogon residents displaced by Ayala Land Inc. (ALI) after the devastating Typhoon Yolanda, will have its Filipino premiere at Ayala Malls Cinemas in Manila Bay as part of the 20th Cinemalaya Film Festival.

The film’s appearance at Cannes 2023 was celebrated by the government’s Film Development Council of the Philippines, and the film’s world premiere at the prestigious Tribeca Festival in New York City was covered by GMA TV News. ASOG has already screened to international acclaim in the United States, Canada, England, Australia, Scotland, Poland, Spain, Holland, Germany, India, Indonesia, and Croatia.

Sicogon became an iconic symbol of disaster capitalism after Typhoon Yolanda hit and devastated the central part of the country. The corporate abuses that ensued amidst the widespread devastation and the absence of government protection from these abuses weakened the resistance of the islanders against corporate land grabbing, especially after Ayala Land, the country’s top real estate developer, entered the picture as a partner of Sicogon Development Corporation (SIDECO), the title holder of the private portion of the island.

Under duress, FESIFFA entered into a lopsided Compromise and Framework of Agreement (CFA) wherein they gave up their land rights claim in exchange for housing provision, support for livelihood, and small plots of land for conventional farming.

The film brought international attention to Ayala’s transgressions in Sicogon, prompting the corporation to finally begin paying reparations to the displaced residents. Since the film’s completion, ALI and Sicogon Development Corp. (SIDECO) have paid for the construction of 784 new homes, one for every family that has refused to leave the island since 2013. However, the residents are still owed 32 million Philippine pesos in livelihood funding, the titles to their land, and other reparations that the corporations committed to delivering in 2021.

ASOG has won awards in the USA, Canada, Europe, and Brazil, and now it will have its Philippine premiere at the Cinemalaya Film Festival.

ASOG follows Jaya, a non-binary Filipino comedian, on a road trip to a gay pageant. Along the journey, the performer encounters people who continue to endure the impacts of climate change, including residents of Sicogon Island displaced by ALI and SIDECO. The film was co-written and directed by Filipino-Canadian filmmaker/comedian Sean Devlin and executive produced by Oscar-winner Adam McKay. The Hollywood Times has hailed it as “one of the finest Filipino films of recent years.” 

In the aftermath of deadly Super Typhoon Haiyan in 2013, Sicogon Development Corp. (SIDECO) and Ayala Land Inc. (ALI), the Philippines’ largest real estate company, swiftly exploited the devastating typhoon to stake their full control of the island. The corporations blocked 6,000 individuals from returning to their community and barred them from repairing or rebuilding their homes (see notice). Despite this, 784 families on the island refused to leave and continued to assert their rights to become owners of the land under the Philippine government’s agrarian reform program and to seek reparations from the companies. 

Production on ASOG began in 2019, including scenes filmed with displaced Sicogon residents Raul Ramos and Amelia Dela Cruz, President and Vice President of FESIFFA. Ramos and Dela Cruz wielded the development of an international feature film in their negotiations, and after the film’s second leg of production was completed in 2021, ALI and SIDECO signed an agreement to meet the residents’ demands, including: developing 33 hectares of agricultural land for the villagers; disbursing livelihood relief funding (32 million Philippine pesos); and financing the construction of 784 new houses for the displaced families that remain on the island.

Despite the agreement, ALI once again continued to drag its feet. In the year following the signing of the agreement, only six of the 784 homes they committed to funding had actually been built. However, once the ASOG film crew returned for their final leg of filming in summer 2022, ALI started yielding to the pressure and has since funded the construction of all 784 homes. 

While there has been progress in the construction of homes, ALI continues to fail to comply with the terms of the agreement in many critical ways, including failure to pay livelihood funding and refusal to transfer legal titles to the land over to the residents.

"Ayala has delivered just a portion of what they committed to. We won’t give up until they fully comply with the agreement they signed and we have been given the titles to our land,” said Amelia Dela Cruz, President of FESIFFA.

“As the largest real estate developer in the country, Ayala Land has all the resources to quickly and fully comply with its obligations to Sicogon residents. Its continued foot-dragging to fulfill what it promised to FESIFFA members puts in serious doubt the company’s professed commitment to promote a sustainable society. The company should walk its talk," said Lirio Cordova, Executive Director of the Rural Poor Institute for Land and Human Rights Services, Inc. (RIGHTS), a non-profit organization that supports Sicogon residents in protecting their rights to land, food, and health.

ASOG is a film by internationally renowned Filipino-Canadian director and comedian Seán Devlin. In 2011, Devlin’s own cousin in the Philippines lost her home in the unprecedented flooding of Typhoon Sendong. The land she lived on was then deemed uninhabitable and designated a “no-build zone” by authorities. For more than a decade, Devlin has devoted himself to documenting the lives of Filipinos who are losing their land and homes to climate change.

“The world premiere of this film is only the beginning of a multifaceted campaign to globalize support for displaced residents of Sicogon. The time has come for Ayala Land to deliver on what they promised," said Devlin. ASOG has additional international festival screenings in Fall 2024 across North America, Europe, and Asia. The film is then slated to have an international release in commercial cinemas around the world in winter 2025, with a worldwide digital release to follow soon after.