Season 5, Ep. 4: Cavite

On this week's episode of Saturday School, we're revisiting the 2005 thriller "Cavite" by Ian Gamazon and Neil dela Llana, which is a unique take on our exploration of Asian Americans in Asia. The film basically takes all the anxieties Asian Americans can feel when we go back to Asia -- the awkwardness of not speaking the language well, the feeling of being completely lost, the guilt over having turned into a foreigner in what's supposed to be our "homeland" -- and transports this all into a thriller scenario, having a fictional terrorist exploit all our main character's insecurities in a life-or-death hostage situation.

Adam (played by Ian Gamazon), a night security guard in San Diego, is on his way to the Philippines for his father's funeral. But as soon as he gets to the airport, he hears something ringing in his bag, and finds someone has slipped him a cell phone. Turns out the man on the other end of the line has his mother and sister, and will kill them unless he does everything he says.

The film is super low-budget guerrilla-style filmmaking. Most the film feels like a home video following Adam racing through the streets, alleyways, and busy marketplaces of the Philippines as this man is taunting him -- and it's an impressive feat they pulled off. It feels like a scary documentary. Also, this was post 9/11, so in some ways, it's reacting to Islamophobia through the lens of a non-practicing Muslim Filipino American man.