Event

Amigo

Seattle Premiere!

(John Sayles, 2010, USA/Philipines, 35mm, 128min)
Amigo, the seventeenth feature film from writer/director John Sayles, stars Joel Torre as Rafael Dacanay, a village mayor caught in the murderous cross-fire of the Philippine-American War in 1900. When U.S. troops garrison his village, Rafael is forced to make the near-impossible, potentially deadly decisions faced by civilians in an occupied country. He comes under pressure to collaborate with the blood-and-guts Colonel Hardacre (Chris Cooper) at the risk of betraying his people. The situation is complex: Rafaelʼs brother Simón (Ronnie Lazaro) is the head of the local Filipino guerillas, and considers any concessions to the Americans to be traitorous; a devious Spanish friar (Yul Vazquez) is charged with translating, but thwarts communication with his spiteful intrigues; a sympathetic American lieutenant
(Garret Dillahunt) begins to learn that "hearts and minds" cannot be won at gunpoint.

Friendship and betrayal, romance and heart-breaking violence, Amigo is a page torn from the forgotten history of imperialism and a mirror of today's irresolvable conflicts.