Note: This review contains references to childhood sexual abuse and trauma.

When Carl Joseph E. Papa’s The Missing begins, one may think they’re watching yet another sci-fi movie. The film centers around a mouthless protagonist, Eric (Carlo Aquino) who is plagued by an alien constantly trying to abduct him and settles for stealing his body parts – Eric’s ear, eye, genitals, and hand leave him over the course of the film. Furthermore, The Missing is a fantastical animated feast for the eyes which blends rotoscoping (a technique where live-action footage is drawn over by animators) and a more traditional, and intentionally child-like, two-dimensional animation style to delineate between Eric’s present and memories. 

However, as Eric’s story unfolds, a heart-wrenching realization is made: the alien that plagues him is actually an externalization of his childhood trauma inflicted by his recently deceased uncle who sexually assaulted him. On its face, a film diving into such a tough and harrowing subject matter could come across as one-note and difficult to watch, but Papa balances the truth of the atrocity that happened to Eric with the complexity of survivors. There’s humor, love, and hope in The Missing, all of which only make the story that much more moving and beautifully nuanced. 

It’s an honest journey of a trauma survivor struggling to regain control of their life. Supporting Aquino’s fantastic performance as Eric are Gio Gahol (“Born Beautiful”) as Eric’s friend Carlo, and Eric’s mother, Rosalinda, is played by Dolly De Leon, the BAFTA-nominated, scene-stealing yacht employee in Ruben Östlund’s Triangle of Sadness. The trio are irresistible together, faithfully portraying what it’s like to live with unprocessed trauma, as well as to love someone who is struggling with a burden they can’t share. The Missing concludes with Eric confronting his past in a compelling final scene where Eric digs up his uncle’s grave, retrieves his missing body parts, and quite literally makes himself whole again. 

At a screening of the film in Los Angeles, Papa, who wrote and directed The Missing, courageously revealed his deeply personal inspiration for the film:

 “Around 2018, people were sending condolence messages to someone who is quite familiar to me, and then I researched that person. I hadn’t seen that person for a very, very long time, and I found out that he was dead, and I was brought back to when I was young and that person did sexual advances to me. And I was angry when I found out that he died because there’s nothing I can do…. I wrote this story at first as a coping mechanism for me to to make sense of things, and then I evolved it to something more hopeful and loving, because I don’t want to send out this film and people would feel bad about it. I wanted it to give them hope. I want the film to have a sense that they could also reclaim their voices.” 

Knowing the context behind The Missing not only adds a depth to the film, it engenders an incredible respect for the filmmaker, who so gracefully transmuted his pain into art by repurposing age-old sci-fi tropes in an original and impactful manner. The use of an alien invader as a personification of sexual assault feels particularly sharp throughout the film, it so succinctly and effectively demonstrates Eric’s loss of autonomy over his own body that he experienced. 

Papa, a software engineer turned filmmaker, also employs animation devices along with sci-fi tropes to demonstrate the absence. Throughout The Missing, there are moments, mainly when Eric loses his hand, where there is no illustration, only a gray-and-white transparency grid, the universal representation for “nothing” in Photoshop and other photo/video editing programs. At first, one may think those omissions are rendering errors, but they were intentional choices by Papa to demonstrate the absence in Eric’s experience. “When you go through this kind of trauma, it takes a lot from you… at one point you don’t feel complete anymore,” he elaborated. 

Beyond drawing from his own experiences in The Missing, the movie’s dialogue is spoken in a mix of a Filipino languages Tagalog and Ilocano, plus bits of English, to honor his ancestral background. The director also chose to rotoscope over the actor’s performances to drive home Eric’s inability to tell what was actually happening around him as a result of his trauma. The overall effect is a film that feels incredibly intimate and vulnerable, yet still accessible for those who haven’t gone through sexual abuse. 

“It helped,” Papa reflected on how telling Eric’s story helped him cope with his past. “Before I wasn’t able to talk about it, no one knew, not even my family. But now I could tell people about it, and I think it’s a step. I mean that trauma is still there… but I know I’m in a better place and moving forward with it.” 

Given Papa’s extremely personal and thoughtful approach to The Missing, it’s no wonder the movie was selected as the Philippines’ submission for Best International Feature Film for the upcoming 96th Academy Awards. “I was shocked,” Papa divulged when asked about his reaction to hearing the news that his film was picked. “For them to select an animated film over more accomplished films and more accomplished filmmakers… I was just in awe of what happened.” 

He also very humbly and humorously admitted that he was in the bathroom when he got the fateful call, “I’m really thankful that they selected us, because it could also be a step up for the Filipino animation community. We rarely make animated feature films in The Philippines, actually around 11 or 12 or so in the entire history of the Philippine industry. So for this to be selected, it means that hopefully we can inspire all the upcoming and actively working Filipino filmmakers to be more brave in creating more original content that’s going to be animated.”

Regardless of whether The Missing secures a nomination at the Academy Awards or not, the film signals a bright future for the Filipino film community, and firmly establishes Papa as a talent to watch in animation. 

Papa’s comments have minorly been edited for brevity and clarity.

WATCH THE TRAILER FOR THE MISSING 

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjWeTdhQrrg?si=MfHSHLFJKZfQ4Rmm&w=560&h=315]