‘2 Valid IDs’ sheds light on the realities of Filipino healthcare

“Initially, the idea came from a meme about applying for a valid ID only to be asked to provide two other valid IDs. That’s what inspired Abet. From there, he married the bureaucracy surrounding identification with the healthcare system in the Philippines,” shares Asuncion-Dagñalan. 

At the outset, 2 Valid IDs was conceived as a short film. Asuncion-Dagñalan recounts that when Raz’s mother passed away, the writer began looking for something to make sense of his grief. “When Abet pitched this to me, I got hooked on the concept of having a female protagonist in a political film. At the time, however, all we had was a synopsis. So I said, ‘Let’s do this’, because it’s a very important story to tell. We all know how broken our identification and healthcare systems are.”

Asuncion-Dagñalan strongly believes in their entry’s power to reach those who have the power to effect change. “I always say that film is a medium for raising awareness and opening people’s eyes. That’s why our policymakers must also see this.” 

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Asuncion-Dagñalan’s work has repeatedly taken her into a position where telling ‘difficult realities’ invited questions about her personal safety. “When I was just pitching Blue Room, a fellow filmmaker asked,  ‘Are you not scared for your life?’ Those were his exact words. Honestly, I never really thought about fear. What’s important to me is to expose the truth.” 

The director takes pride in providing an avenue for experiences too often dismissed as ordinary. “The people whose stories we have been telling belong to the bottom rung of our society. Most of them have come to believe that it is simply normal. They think, ‘this must really be how it is’, so they just accept it.”

In her film, Asuncion-Dagñalan is careful not to overlook the indignities that accompany illness, including waking before dawn to queue for assistance, or waiting in cramped hospital spaces while already weakened by their disease. 

For her, the tragedy is that it is often not the illness alone that kills, but the very system through which Filipinos are expected to seek care. 

“They endure even more once they are in the hospital. As you can see, they do not necessarily die from their illness, but from the conditions they are subjected to while seeking treatment,” Asuncion-Dagñalan points out. “That is what we wanted to show in 2 Valid IDs. We have such a fragmented structure where every institution asks for the same information over and over again… if only we had a centralised system, people would not have to repeatedly suffer from the same queues, paperwork and bureaucratic hurdles.” 

Asuncion-Dagñalan further explains that people at the heart of the story are farmers, many of whom lack the resources to navigate bureaucratic processes. For people whose days are already consumed by working to make a living, administrative know-how can feel yet another burden. 

“Their priority is simply to survive, to get by from one day to the next. If that’s their reality, do you think they have the time to worry about getting an ID, renewing one or tracking down yet another paper?” she asks. 

When asked about her experience working with the cast, particularly the film’s lead, veteran comedian Marietta “Pokwang” Subong (whom she affectionately calls “Mamang” on set), Asuncion-Dagñalan admits to a peculiar mix of gratitude and regret. It is fortunate, she says, that Pokwang can draw from her own experiences to bring depth to her performance; unfortunate, however, that such authenticity comes from having endured the same distressing circumstances in 2 Valid IDs. 

“Mamang experienced something similar with her eldest child… she was an Overseas Filipino Worker (OFW). She went through the same difficulties with acquiring identification, even having a relative line up on her behalf because she was miles away,” says the filmmaker. “So when we pitched the story, Mamang immediately understood it. I didn’t have a hard time explaining because even during the script reading, the actors were already crying.” 

The director reveals that she worked in a very collaborative environment for 2 Valid IDs. “When the actors felt they could give more to a scene or their character, they would tell me, and we would work on it together.” 

For Asuncion-Dagñalan, the most challenging part of bringing 2 Valid IDs to life was mounting the film, particularly its opening sequence. “You’ll understand why when you see it,” she teases. “I pay close attention to the opening because that is what captures the audience.”

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The trailer for 2 Valid IDs quickly made rounds online, something that Asuncion-Dagñalan says she and the team received with pleasure. “We are all surprised by the traction. Personally, I never really expected it to go viral from the teasers alone. I told Abet that I feel a little more pressure now because audiences might expect more from what we’ve done. I just hope that those who supported our promotional materials will have the same response when they see the film,” Asuncion-Dagñalan shares. 

“The tension is definitely there because they might expect more, but I’m pretty confident the story and the call to action are there,” she adds.

For Asuncion-Dagñalan and the team that worked hard on 2 Valid IDs, the mission does not end with Cinemalaya. As of this post, they are already exploring where the story can go next. “We’re pushing for our lawmakers to see this. There is only so much that can happen if the only people watching are those who already know the problem,” she explains. “What matters to us is the social impact. As long as the system remains unreformed, this continues to be an issue.”

Much like her contemporaries, Asuncion-Dagñalan has no definitive answer for how long she will continue making politically charged films like Blue Room and 2 Valid IDs. Her hope, however, is a bit paradoxical; that these films one day become “irrelevant”, remembered only as references to a more dysfunctional past. 

“That’s my wish, that I eventually run out of stories to tell because we finally have better systems around here and these problems have already been addressed.”

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