The leadership of the Society of Filipino Film Reviewers sincerely apologizes to the filmmakers behind the documentary film Maria.
At 6:41 pm of February 6, the Maria filmmakers reached out to us alerting us of a 39-second clip from the film that was posted on Instagram and Facebook accounts that did not belong to an SFFR member. Upon investigation, we learned that the clip was screen recorded without permission from an Instagram story posted by one of our members, who immediately took down his story. Unfortunately, the screen-recorded version stayed up online for more than four hours even after the account owner had been asked by the producers of Maria as well as by the SFFR to take it down to avoid untoward harm to the individuals portrayed in the clip. The said clips have all been taken down.
Since its establishment in 2020, the SFFR has been strictly observing protocols regarding the sharing of screeners sent to our members, knowing the significant amount of resources produced by local film workers to come up with a film. Without intending to break the covenant, one of our members made a serious lapse in judgment by sharing a short clip from the film on his personal social media story, which was eventually picked up by one of his followers.
Sanctions have been meted out against the offending member, including the revocation of membership privileges and access to screening copies of films for 10 months (until Dec 2024).
Moving forward, the SFFR will implement more rigorous procedures in ensuring the protection of all materials shared with the group to avoid any such reoccurrence.