Food Delivery delivers a gut punch. A brave, banned, and blazing exposé from the Philippines. From the Doc Edge Film Festival 2025.
Tickets Available HERE.
On a cold Monday evening at Auckland’s historic Capitol Cinema, a quiet but mighty revolution took place. New Zealand became the first country in the world to screen Food Delivery, the controversial and now officially banned Filipino documentary that’s stirring geopolitical pots from Manila to Beijing.
Directed by the fiercely determined Baby Ruth Villarama, Food Delivery is no Netflix-and-chill kind of documentary. It’s a scorching political grenade, gift-wrapped in the calm language of sovereignty and sea rights—but detonating into a searing indictment of Chinese encroachment in the West Philippine Sea.
Filmed under immense pressure and surveillance, Villarama’s exposé was initially funded by a grant she received in 2023, allowing her six months of intense groundwork in an increasingly dangerous political landscape.
Her phone was tapped. Her Facebook account erased. And just 48 hours before its scheduled festival debut in the Philippines, Food Delivery was slapped with a ban, allegedly to maintain peace.
The truth? This film rattled cages in high places.
The premise is deceptively simple. It follows the lives of ordinary Filipino fishermen and military food delivery workers whose livelihoods are being steadily eroded—almost literally—by China’s illegal occupation and militarisation of waters well within the Philippines’ 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone.
It’s a quiet invasion that has been unfolding since the January 1996 Mischief Reef Incident, largely ignored by the rest of the world.
But what emerges is far more complex. A powerful narrative of generational resilience, quiet defiance, and the geopolitical theatre playing out across a sea that’s been stolen in plain sight.
The film unpacks the disinformation campaigns flooding Filipino media—many orchestrated by pro-China networks—spinning wild tales of Western involvement in the documentary’s production.
Let’s be clear. Food Delivery is 100% Filipino-made. No CIA fingerprints, no MI6 budgets. Just a country trying to tell its truth before it’s overwritten by imperial propaganda.
In the crowd were journalists, artists, Kiwi cinephiles and a few teary-eyed Filipinos, who finally saw their country’s struggle projected onto a screen 8,000 kilometres from home. This was not just a film—it was a call to attention.
When director Baby Ruth Villarama and her team appeared for a post-screening Q&A, the applause was thunderous and sustained. She spoke candidly about censorship, state surveillance, and the deep emotional cost of being silenced by her own country. Yet her voice, like her film, remained resolute, fearless, and fiercely unshaken.
Food Delivery may never be seen legally in the Philippines. But thanks to Doc Edge Festival and New Zealand’s refusal to bow to international pressure, this landmark documentary has found safe harbour here—for now.
If art is resistance, then Food Delivery is a torpedo fired straight into the heart of silence.
Rating: ★★★★★ (5/5)
Unmissable. Uncomfortable. Unflinchingly true.
Paul Marshall
Currently screening nationwide at the Doc Edge Festival — a must-watch documentary event. Tickets Available HERE.
