This story tells about a painful reality and a highly controversial documentary issue. That story began when there was a heinous murder that killed a girl named Jennifer Lud, a Filipina woman Trans, brutally by a Marine. After that case, there are three women who are starting to re-examine the case and are an activist lawyer, a journalist and Jennifer's mother, who started a political upheaval, chasing justice and controlling the history of American imperialism.
Even with its stumbling nature... "Call Her Ganda" is still a valiant effort to fuse inquiry, testimony, heart and protest in dealing with its complex intertwining of facts and issues.
A languidly told retrospective of Jennifer Laude's homicide, which meshes poignantly with the equally torpid, creaky judicial wheels of the U.S.-Filipino military industrial complex.
Following one of the most gut-wrenching events in the history of the Filipino trans movement, Call Her Ganda is a staggering and thought-provoking documentary on the epidemic of violence against LGBTQ people.
With access to only one side of its central conflict, and a scattershot approach that skims over key details and points of interest, this well-intentioned documentary leaves audiences feeling like they're only getting part of a much larger story.
Call Her Ganda works best when it's focused on Laude and the case of her murder, an overwhelming showcase of empathy and persistence in the face of American racism and transmisogyny
