Amigo

Amigo (2011)

The heart remembers what even history forgets.

Rafael is a village mayor caught in the murderous crossfire of the Philippine-American War. When U.S. troops occupy his village, Rafael comes under pressure from a tough-as-nails officer to help the Americans in their hunt for Filipino guerilla fighters. But Rafael's brother is the head of the local guerillas, and considers anyone who cooperates with the Americans to be a traitor. Rafael quickly finds himself forced to make the impossible, potentially deadly decisions faced by ordinary civilians in an occupied country.

Date of release
2011-08-19
TMDB
4.9 / 10 (19)
Runtime
2h 8m
Genres
Drama, History, War
Director
John Sayles

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Filmed in: Philippines

Amigo is a Filipino-American 2010 drama film written and directed by John Sayles. The film takes place in the Philippines in 1900 during the Philippine–American War.

Development

Cinematical reports that the film was once titled Baryo, and that the idea for it came from a yet-to-be-published novel Some Time in the Sun, detailing American imperialism in the Philippines.

The book will actually be called A Moment in the Sun, though the unrealized screenplay which inspired it was called Some Time in the Sun.

The screenplay was written in two weeks and it was filmed over eight months on the island province of Bohol.

Sayles said the "amigo" of the title was the mayor:

The American soldiers were always asked, "Is he a good amigo or a bad amigo?" There was some irony to him being called an amigo. However, the complication in that movie that the usual war movie, you follow the guys on one side and the other side is the enemy. You root for the guys on your side and the other side is shooting at them. This is a movie where it's almost evenly divided.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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