Turumba

Mixing documentary-like observation with playful irony, Kidlat Tahimik’s cautionary fable depicts the corrosive effects of capitalism on a tiny Philippine town. It’s there that a family—who make their living producing papier-mâché animals for the religious festival of Turumba—find their lives upended when a German entrepreneur commissions them to produce thousands of figurines for the 1972 Munich Olympics, transforming their humble handicraft business into an increasingly industrial, profit-driven, and alienating enterprise. Told from the point of view of a young boy, TURUMBA uses child’s-eye innocence to issue a barbed takedown of neocolonialist cultural corruption.