Anyone who has visited the Philippines knows the street-children who besiege motorists, taxi passengers and pedestrians with requests to buy small garlands of scented sampaguita flowers. Sociologically, the kids are a symptom of endemic poverty and the lack of social services and welfare provision. They’re also victims of a system which professes to revere education and teaches them to pray for blessings and salvation from on high. Francis X Pasion’s plangent docu-drama takes the human view. Special Jury Prize-winner in the Cinemalaya Festival, the country’s major forum for indies, it offers both a sardonic commentary on the forces which trap children in poverty and a moving engagement with the kids themselves. Pasion began by interviewing street-kids on-camera (we see fragments of these interviews throughout) and then invited a dozen girls and boys to re-enact episodes they’d described. These include harvesting the flowers by night in Pampanga, dealing with ailing or abusive parents, and coping with the pressures of life on the streets of Quiapo ? pressures which push some of the boys, in particular, into child prostitution. (Tony Rayns)