Filming Biblical Interpretations from the Ground: Anti-Empire Matthean Interpretations in Huwag Kang Papatay (2017) and the Philippine “Drug War”

Ditsi Carolino’s “Huwag Kang Papatay” (Thou Shall Not Kill, 2017) is an unconventional Jesus film. As a documentary, it presents the problems and the responses by members of the Roman Catholic Church in Metro Manila to the so-called “War on Drugs” (commonly known as Tokhang) of the Duterte government that resulted in thousands of extrajudicial killing (EJK) victims. From a biblical lens, this paper analyzes examples of grassroots recontextualizing interpretations of select Matthean passages like (1) Mt 6:9−13, the Lord’s Prayer, in the context of praying for an extrajudicial killing victim; (2) Mt 2:1−18, a street theater adaptation showing the massacre of the innocents, representing the beginning of the EJKs; and (3) Mt 27:27−50, a street theater adaptation of Jesus’ passion recontextualized in the plight of the victimized drug personalities. These episodes are examined using insights from biblical narrative criticism, performance criticism, empire studies, ritual studies and a liberationist approaches. The paper concludes that biblical interpretations from the ground in this documentary film demonstrate Matthew’s anti-empire message by recontextualizing Jesus’s story in the context of extrajudicial killings to advocate for political dialogue and action-response against human rights violations and development issues caused by the EJKs.