‘And So It Begins’ shows change can still happen in ‘small spaces’ — Leni Robredo

(From left) Rappler CEO Maria Ressa, former vice president Leni Robredo, Marian Pastor Roces, and Ramona Diaz in a talkback session for “And So It Begins” at the Cinemalaya Festival. Image: Courtesy of Erickson dela Cruz

For former vice president Leni Robredo, “And So It Begins,” which revisits the 2022 national elections, goes beyond recalling the country’s elections and her presidential campaign. It amplifies the message that change can happen — no matter which space one comes from.

The Ramona Diaz-helmed documentary is a continuation of her 2022 piece “A Thousand Cuts,” which centered around Nobel laureate and Rappler CEO Maria Ressa under former president Rodrigo Duterte. Featuring 800 hours worth of footage, it premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival in January.

While one of the documentary’s scenes touched on Robredo addressing her loss at the elections, she believes that it also serves as a reminder to the youth to focus on available spaces where it allows them to make change happen.

“This is something that I’ve been telling my young staff at the Office of the Vice President (OVP). When you’re young, you’re determined to change the world. But because everything is broken, it becomes overwhelming,” Robredo said at the docu-film’s premiere night on the week of the Cinemalaya Festival when asked how young voters should view the documentary.

“You feel a sense of helplessness and hopelessness. Let us not focus on changing the world. Let us look at which spaces are available to us,” she continued. “And those spaces — no matter how small, let us fill them up. If we’re trying to do everything, are we trying to fill up the spaces available for us? When we shift our mindset to that, we can focus on one problem at a time while bringing our capacities together.”

Robredo pointed out that everyone, including the youth, has a purpose and space meant for them. But it’s about knowing how each space can be used for good.

“Maybe when we focus on it, we can shatter what is expected and repair what’s broken. We all have different roles,” she said. “When we bring our efforts together, we can shatter even the strongest. This is my mindset. When we find the right space, let’s fill them up.”

‘Fix what is broken’

Ressa, on the other hand, stressed that while it’s important to “fix everything that is broken,” it doesn’t hurt to enjoy the process behind it.

“You have to fix everything that is broken. And unfortunately, a lot is broken. But you have to actually enjoy the creation of that because everything that came from my generation, it was a different world,” she said.

(From left) Rappler CEO Maria Ressa, former vice president Leni Robredo, Marian Pastor Roces, and Ramona Diaz. Image: Hannah Mallorca/INQUIRER.net

The Nobel laureate then pointed out that the kind of technology the youth is facing will change, which is an urgent need to demand better. Despite this, there is still hope that “inspiration spreads as fast as anger.”

“The technology [the youth is] growing with and what is being rolled out, will change even more. The environment is going to get worse. We must demand better. We’ve learned some lessons [in the documentary]… and one of them is that inspiration spreads faster than anger,” she said.

“It’s so easy to tear something down. It’s very hard to build. In your generation, the youth today must build. We’ll help you but your energy is different. Don’t become cynical — that is the wrong path,” she further said.

On ‘radical love’

One of the selling points of Robredo’s presidential campaign was to practice “radical love.” When asked to define what it means in the present, she said her intentions remained the same while touching on the importance of the “long game.”

“In the 2022 campaign, the model that we looked at was when Türkiye was trying to oust its president Recep Tayyip Erdogan. They practiced a platform of radical love,” she said. “While here, people are really polarized. Because of that, they were not listening to each other. In Türkiye, the opposition wanted to campaign among their ranks and open their hearts to Erdogan’s supporters… we felt there were a lot of similarities.”

(From left) Former vice president Leni Robredo and “And So It Begins” director Ramona Diaz. Image: Courtesy of Erickson dela Cruz

Robredo admitted that practicing radical love, especially on social media, is hard. Yet it started “something special” among her supporters. “When the results came out, I wanted to tell the people that we didn’t lose. We started something really special,” she said, revealing the documentary’s working title was originally “This is How It Ends.”

“Should we treat it as the end? How can we practice radical love? Let’s keep going,” she continued. “When we’re in election mode, we think about fighting back. But for me, it’s about the power of the long game. We are aware of what went wrong and we must correct these when we enter the fight. Even if we did the campaign in a short time, let us keep going because we’ll get better.”