PJ Raval’s Call Her Ganda is a film I’ve been raving about since catching it at Hot Docs last spring. It’s the story of Jennifer Laude – Filipina, trans and a sometime sex worker – whose 2014 murder at the hands of a US Marine stationed overseas might have gone unnoticed, like the vast majority of victims of violence fitting Jennifer’s many marginalized identities. Instead the 26-year-old’s death sparked not only a national outcry, but led to an international showdown over issues far beyond gender or sex – and straight into matters of unequal justice, unleashed militarism and American imperialism.
And behind this grassroots inferno in the Philippines stood three remarkable women acting as human fuel. First there was Jennifer’s fearless mom, Julita “Nanay” Laude, proudly standing up for her daughter, refusing to ever let her be humiliated or shamed. Then there was another cisgender woman, Virgie Suarez, a lawyer determined to move the spotlight off of gender and onto US impunity (as the soldier, Scott Pemberton – who left Jennifer to die naked in a hotel bathroom, her head in a toilet – ultimately found himself immune to local laws thanks to the Visiting Forces Agreement). Lastly there was a trans American journo with ties to the country, Meredith Talusan, relentlessly pursuing and publicizing not just Jennifer’s life story (which included her grieving German fiancé), but that of a white Western man getting away with her murder.
As Raval respectfully follows this trio in their fight against justice denied the deft documentarian stays attuned to the universal themes playing out at the edges of the frame, which encompasses the plights and traditions of indigenous communities around the globe. To the American eye, at first glance mainstream Filipinos may seem progressively accepting of their trans brothers and sisters – but then one only has to remember that Native Americans also have historically welcomed the gender nonconforming members of their tribes. A refusal to be silenced – or to allow any members of one’s community to be shamed into silence – is actually integral to the backlash against white Western imperialism wherever it exists.
The foreign aggression framing of Jennifer’s killing is likewise a savvy political move. Of course, this does not go unnoticed by the country’s wily dictator Duterte, who relishes any opportunity to show his cajones by standing up to America. He even goes so far as to step in with financial help for Nanay, thereby successfully thwarting the US government’s sleazy efforts to buy the grieving mother’s silence. That a human rights-violating authoritarian could come out on the right side of justice is just one of the doc’s glaringly thorny ironies.
The other is killer Pemberton’s ludicrous defense, in which the fact that he loves and accepts his lesbian sister is offered as proof that he couldn’t possibly be transphobic. (Which of course plays as wrongheadedly tone deaf as the white supremacist claiming he couldn’t possibly be racist because he has a black friend.) But such treachery also highlights the beauty of Call Her Ganda (Ganda translates as “Beauty,” by the way, Jennifer’s nickname from her mom). Life is full of complications, contradictions, exploitation, and uninterrupted wrongs that continue to this day. And yet there are still moral compasses like the film’s three undaunted heroines, forever refusing to let history stand in their way.