In development · premiering 2027
The Long Rescue
Filmed over ten years in Cebu, Philippines, The Long Rescue meets Filipina teen survivors of sex trafficking in a secret shelter as they dream of family and romance — hoping to overcome the poverty, predators, and pimps of their childhood.
What happens when they return to the communities that failed them?
Status
Filmed over ten years. Premiering 2027. Fellow at IDFA Producers Connection, Gotham Week, and FIFDH Impact Days (2024). Fellow at DOC NYC Storytelling Incubator and Film Independent CNN Docu-Series Intensive (2022). Winner at Chicago Pitch and Movies That Matter (2021). Finishing funds being raised. Open to conversations with fiscal sponsors, impact producers, and co-producers working at the intersection of human trafficking, girlhood, and the Philippine diaspora.
What the film is about
The Long Rescue follows a small group of Filipina teen survivors of sex trafficking who live in a secret shelter in Cebu, Philippines. The film is a decade-long portrait — of girls becoming women, of friendships formed inside the shelter's walls, and of the dreams they carry about family, romance, and a future beyond what their childhoods tried to make of them.
Their circumstances are set by poverty, by predators, and by pimps — but the film is not about those forces so much as about what the young women build in defiance of them. And it is about the harder question: what happens when they leave the shelter and return to the communities that failed them in the first place?
Team
Creative Producer Jethro Patalinghug
Trailer and additional materials available on request.
Support
If you're a grants officer, fiscal sponsor, impact producer, or foundation working in adjacent spaces, I'd love to send you the trailer. The film is fiscally sponsored and eligible for tax-deductible contributions through a 501(c)(3). Details on request.