Grieving father battles bureaucracy for daughter’s death certificate in ‘Nakabinbin’

Carlo Malapit Gula’s Puregold CinePanalo short film exposes the painful reality of government red tape during tragedy.

For a grieving father, securing a death certificate should be a straightforward step toward laying his daughter to rest. In Carlo Malapit Gula’s “Nakabinbin,” however, the process becomes a bureaucratic ordeal as a missing birth certificate, incomplete documents and rigid government procedures stand between a family and a proper burial.

A short film entry in this year’s Puregold CinePanalo Film Festival, “Nakabinbin” follows Victor, played by Soliman Cruz, as he tries to obtain a death certificate for his daughter, Nora, who died without a birth certificate. With only a day left on the rented coffin, Victor enters a crowded municipal hall carrying incomplete documents and the hope that someone will help him navigate the process.

Instead, he is sent from one service window to another, encountering clerks bound by procedures that leave little room for circumstances that fall outside their requirements. Every additional requirement pushes Nora’s burial further out of reach, turning a father’s grief into an exhausting bureaucratic ordeal.

The story draws from Gula’s own experience with his mother, who grew up without a birth certificate and spent decades having to prove her identity through government documents. He accompanied her to municipal offices and witnessed the difficulty of securing his grandmother’s death certificate while his family was still grieving.

“Simula pagkabata, kita ko na ang hirap ng nanay ko,” Gula recalls. Those experiences shaped “Nakabinbin,” turning the frustrations of long processes, repeated requirements and mounting expenses into a story about how bureaucracy can affect people at their most vulnerable.

At its core, “Nakabinbin” examines what happens when rigid systems leave no room for people whose circumstances do not fit neatly into official records. For Gula, the film is ultimately for those who are denied their rights even in death: “Ito ay para sa mga taong pinagkakaitan ng karapatan kahit na sa kabilang-buhay.”

With “Nakabinbin,” Gula makes his debut as a narrative filmmaker at the national competition level. A Communication Arts student at Colegio de San Juan de Letran – Manila, he has previously written and directed five short films.

“Nakabinbin” is set to compete at the Puregold CinePanalo Film Festival in the Philippines from September 23 to October 3, 2026.

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