The American action film “The Pilot”, starring Gerald Butler, has sparked controversy in the Philippines due to demands by various senators to ban its screening for offering a “negative image” of the country.
The controversy stems from the fictional scenes that take place on the island of the archipelago of Joló, in the southeast of the Philippines, where the plane in which the protagonists are traveling crashes and they find themselves in a territory under the exclusive control of an insurgent militia. with no trace of the Philippine military or state institutions.
The Film Classification Board (MTRCB), the body that regulates film screenings in the Philippines, said in a statement on Monday that it is “committed to banning” the film, but did not confirm the ban. .
Senate President Juan Miguel Zubiri and a senator, Robinhood Padilla, clashed over U.S. production during a Senate debate last week.
“The reputation of our homeland is at stake. It’s fine for us Filipinos to talk about the problems of our nation, but if other countries make the country look bad, we shouldn’t allow it,” he said. Padilla said.
The senator pointed out that in the strip “the Philippine army is not present”.
Although the Philippine state controls most of the Joló archipelago in the southeast of the Philippines – some 530,000 inhabitants – this area continues to host camps of the jihadist group Abu-Sayaf and related insurgents. to the Islamic State, according to the US State Department. UNITED STATES
For his part, the senator and former head of the National Police, Bato dela Rosa, said, along the same lines, that the image projected by the film could negatively affect international tourism.
Facing nationalist criticism from some politicians, the Directors Guild of the Philippines in a statement on Monday rejected the censorship of the film, saying “freedom of choice should stay with the public rather than being imposed by politicians.”
“If the state can tolerate the free expression of trolls, hoaxes and historical revisionism regardless of its effect on the prestige of the country, then the state can do the same for a work that foreign journalists have considered a stupid entertainment B-movie and not a reliable chronicle of the affairs of the country,” the statement read.
The film, directed by Jean-François Richet and starring Gerald Butler, was released in the United States on January 13, but does not yet have a scheduled release date in the Philippines.