Verdict

A wife presses charges against her violent husband, only to face fresh battles against bureaucracy, in this incensing courtroom thriller.

Abused and battered wife, Joy (Max Eigenmann) lives in Manila, with her six-year-old daughter Angel (Jordhen Suan) and her husband, Dante (the late Kristoffer King), a small-time criminal. After a particularly vicious beating, Joy presses charges but soon finds resistance in the form of Dante's overprotective mother (Triangle of Sadness' Dolly De Leon) and the sheer Kafkaesque absurdity of the legal bureaucratic system.

Raymund Ribay Gutierrez's film is at once a gripping procedrual thriller, a suspenseful and incensing courtroom drama, and a vital advocate for the experiences of abused women everywhere.