On Trial
A Review of Cinemalaya 21’s Full-Length Film Paglilitis.
Words Betty Uy Regala
Photos courtesy of Cinemalaya
February 04, 2026
Bayad utang loosely means the father’s negative karma for having female children in his family or, in its literal sense, paying off a debt.
It’s a good thing that the mere mention of it (the first connotation) has become rare and cancel-level inappropriate nowadays. But back in the 90s, when I first entered the workforce, the use of this expression was pervasive even with progressive groups like writers since this was told to me by a male writer right about my age. I don’t consider myself to be bayad utang, I said. I stopped there and did not mention that I have four other sisters with one younger brother. The writer mentioned it referring to his own infant daughter.
At that time, women were expected to be secretaries in the workforce. It’s a good thing that the term ‘secretary’ has been replaced by ‘assistant’ and evolved to the more acceptable ‘associate’ for entry-level jobs. I remember a well-meaning aunt and an older sister who were pushing me to accept secretarial work, not that there was anything wrong with it, but I didn’t want to become one. I became a staff writer instead with a trade publication.
As a young woman and even as a nine-year-old child, I experienced my share of sexual molestation at the home front from my father’s half-brother; sexual touching from pervs while commuting to and from my high school in Manila; and later on, sexual harassment at the workplace.
The first incident I could recall was in my first job as a staff writer in that tech magazine. There was an out-of-town convention in Subic that I was supposed to cover with another female writer. I was seated beside a much older, heavy-set tisoy tech vendor who initially talked shop and later on progressed to offering to buy me whatever I wanted from duty-free shops. He gave me his room number. I told my male bosses about this when we got back, which appeared as a blind item in our paper.
This was but one among the many encounters I had experienced in the 30 years or so that I have been working as a female professional. I was part of the unreported statistics that filmmakers Cheska Marfori and Raymund Barcelon placed in their 2025 Cinemalaya film Paglilitis.
As I write this, the Jeffrey Epstein files are all over international news. Men in power doing despicable things to the most vulnerable in our society—children and women. Or, we could just look around at our own backyard of parents video-recording their own nude female children performing sexual acts to earn some British pounds or US dollars.
I shared my molestation to two of my best friends—one in high school and another in college—who also confided that they were molested by family members. The first one had been her oldest brother and the second had been her paternal uncle.
This sort of topic had been “more” taboo during that time in a patriarchal society that, instead of punishing the wrongdoer and protecting its children, only shamed us if and when we were actually seen and heard. Hence, we only shared it privately, in our case, with one or two best friends. We did not know we experienced the same ordeal as children, though in varying and horrifying degrees.
I have worked in companies where co-employees turned a blind eye on inappropriate “relationships” of the much older bosses, especially those who owned the companies, with the much younger secretaries or executive assistants who could be their daughters. Rather than feel empathy for the younger co-workers, they were vilified. I, too, vilified them because of the perks they enjoyed—a new car, travels abroad, hefty bonuses, jewelry items, being “untouchable” in the office, etc.
But our trio of friends in that particular office had also been wary of attracting the attention of the owner of the company or of any higher-ups, should we seek employment elsewhere. “It’s important that the boss does not like you that way,” said a friend in that group who worked in HR.
Thankfully, society has progressed decades later. But even in this woke culture era and social media, patriarchy is still pervasive, which allows sexual harassment to transpire everywhere, including the workplace.
Paglilitis is set in the here and now in the era of social media. The protagonist Jonalyn Samuel (Rissey Reyes-Robinson) worked as a second executive assistant to the president and owner of a milk manufacturing company outside the metro. Eduardo Guzman (Leo Martinez), owner and CEO of Mother’s Pride, sexually harassed Jonalyn on different occasions inside his office.
The first executive assistant, who is also female, instead of warning her younger colleague, gives Jonalyn a stern and this-is-part-of-the-job look whenever she hesitates to enter the CEO’s room on her own. A male colleague recounts within the earshot of Jonalyn how Guzman chose a sex worker in one of their male bonding outings who looked like her.
Her mother (Cherry Malvar) knew about the sexual harassment but told Jonalyn to bear it since her father (Rolando Inocencio) is an invalid, her younger sister Jasmine (Barbara Miguel) is still studying, and Jonalyn is the breadwinner.
Cut to her working as a virtual assistant (VA) at home for a foreign boss. Her mother rouses her from sleep to meet with a female lawyer, Atty. Silvia Ardenia (Eula Valdez), who is at their house. The lawyer and her mother encourage Jonalyn to file a case. Secondary to seeking justice for her daughter, the mother is seemingly more interested in the settlement money that they could potentially receive.
Atty. Ardenia, who has her own agenda for helping out Jonalyn, drops the case buildup. Jonalyn decides to pursue it on her own by calling former executive assistants in Mother’s Pride. Her identity is leaked to social media, which at first was sympathetic to her cause and now has turned on her.
It is only when Jasmine gets into a school fight that the audience members are introduced to the eldest in the brood—Jovit (Paolo O’Hara). He tells Jonalyn to stop pursuing the case without acknowledging the fact that their mother put her up to it in the first place.
Paglilitis balances the story with scenes from the Guzman family—wife Mildred (Jackie Lou Blanco), son Matthew (Sid Lucero), and their legal counsel Atty. Bernie Chavez (Bombi Plata).
The film, which helps amplify awareness on sexual harassment in the workplace, ends with a hopeful note for Jonalyn’s plight, even though the courtroom battle and justice are still far from sight.
Paglilitis has the following screening schedule at the University of the Philippines (UP) Manila campus:
February 23, 2026 / Monday: 11:30 AM to 1:00 PM
February 24, 2026 / Tuesday: 8:30 AM to 10:00 AM
February 25, 2026 / Wednesday: 1:00 PM to 2:30 PM
For more information on the UP Manila screening, please message the Paglilitis FB Official Page (https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61575874943167) or email [email protected].
