A CRITICALLY-LAUDED documentary on a controversial double-murder case is to be screened at the Dingle Film Festival in a fortnight’s time. Give Up Tomorrow has won awards at prestigious international documentary festivals like Tribeca in New York, HotDocs in Canada and the Sheffield Doc/Fest in the UK.
The documentary follows the story of a Filipino man called Paco Larranaga who was accused of the murder of two young Chinese-Filipina sisters Marijoy and Jacqueline Chong in 1997. However, when they went missing on the island of Cebu, Larranga was at a party hundreds of miles away in Manila on a different island, “surrounded by dozens of reliable witnesses”, according to the film-makers.
Larranga’s case over the last decade - he has been in prison for 14 years now – has been taken up by Amnesty International, the Spanish government, the UN and Fair Trials International, all of whom have expressed their belief that he did not kill and rape the sisters. The documentary claims to expose “flamboyantly corrupt public officials, drug dealers, cops on the take and… a frenzied legal and media circus”.
This is a trailer for the documentary from Thoughtful Robot Productions:
(via thoughtfulrobot/Youtube)
The film is showing as part of the four-day festival in the Co Kerry town. Death of A Superhero opens the event on Thursday, 15 March and This Must Be The Place, starring Sean Penn, Frances McDormand and Bono’s daughter Eve Hewson closes it on Sunday, 18 March. Martin Sheen-starring Stella Days, short film programmes, workshops with international film-makers and a documentary about the visit of Amy Winehouse to Dingle as part of the Other Voices event in 2006 are some of the other events on the programme.
As well as the international flavour to the programme, there is a strong focus on Irish film. Earlier this year, the organisers offered a €5,000 fund for a new Irish language short – the shortlisted proposals will be pitched and judged during the festival. The short film programme running during the fest includes Irish gems like this one, Home Turf, made by Dingle native Aideen O’Sullivan and TheJournal.ie‘s Friday at the Movies co-ordinator Ross Whitaker:
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