The Garden of Earthly Delights Confronts, it does not provide comfort.

But then again, and on closer inspection it does. The film offers hope – if you dare to find it

Yesterday I was privileged to attend the screening of The Garden of Earthly Delights at the Films that Matter festival in The Hague.

This film is not easy viewing. It is not entertainment. It’s a confrontation — with systems, with taboos, with ourselves. It will not be a box office hit, but it will create value in the long term, for those willing to be challenged.

Ginto is an 11-year-old street kid in Manila, fighting to survive in a world where everything is transactional, and exploitation is the norm. For Western audiences — shaped by more subtle forms of control under a capitalist achievement society — the directness of this film may feel like a punch to the gut.

Filipino audiences face a different discomfort: that a European director has portrayed Ginto’s struggle so unflinchingly well. During the Q&A, someone asked: “Why can this story not be told by a Filipino director?” The answer is simple: when you are too close to the pain, you often cannot see and feel it clearly.

Critics may call this yet another post-colonial take from the West. And I was curious too — would this be yet another outsider’s patronising gaze? But from what I heard and saw, the director Morgan Knibbe approached the story with care and detail. The result is not a film made by a Westerner about “the other.” It is a film made by a human being about what happens when humanity is stripped away.

And that, precisely, is what makes it so uncomfortable.

Exploitation Isn’t Always Obvious — But It’s Always There

The Garden of Earthly Delights exposes exploitation in its rawest form. But the real shock is realising how familiar it feels — how close it hits to home, if you care to dig deep enough to see it.

Most of us are not exploited through violence. We’re exploited through expectation, obligation, and distraction. We live in a burnout society. In cultures that prize obedience over truth. In belief systems that offer safety in exchange for silence.

We trade honesty for harmony. To stay agreeable to be accepted. We follow rules we didn’t write, chase goals we didn’t choose, and perform identities we don’t fully believe in — all to feel like we belong.

This too is exploitation. Just less visible. Less painful. But equally numbing.

And it doesn’t belong to one country or culture. It cuts across ideologies, religions, even progressive spaces. When fear becomes the currency of love, when worth is earned through compliance — we’re not seeking truth. We’re surviving systems.

The Burnout Loop: Perform, Consume, Repeat & Judge the Other

So we distract ourselves. We chase the next thing — the upgrade, the trip, the outfit, the version of ourselves that might finally be good enough. We post curated lives for approval. We fill calendars to avoid stillness. We call it “living.” But often, it’s just running from one appointment to the other. Otherness and taboos are suppressed – or exported.

Until we crash. A burnout, a breakdown, maybe therapy. We patch ourselves up, just well enough to do it all again. Until retirement. Then death.

The Garden of Earthly Delights invites us to break that loop. It dares us to see how power is extracted from all of us — not just in the slums of Manila, but in the structures we accept as normal and that contribute from afar to Ginto’s fate: the developed world exporting their toxic taboos to developing countries.

Benjamin Moen plays the role of a pedophile who finds himself in the streets of Manila and eventually his and Ginto’s path cross. Benjamin excels in playing this difficult character who exploits the poorest among us, and who is exploited himself in a violent transactional society without inhibition.. Watching Benjamin character wander through the streets of Manila is unsettling, and it is tempting to remain focus on him and continue ignore the many other forms of exploitation around us.

The Garden of Earthly Delights isn’t a story about “them.” It’s a mirror held up to us.

Should You Watch This Film?

Are you ready to be changed? Can you witness someone else’s truth without needing to explain it away? Do you wonder how exploitation for power works — not just in politics, but in your own daily life?

Then yes, you should watch this film.

But not to be entertained.

Watch it to confront the systems we’re part of. Watch it to understand the mechanisms we’ve internalised. Watch it if you’re ready to stop pointing fingers — and start looking inwards.

Because transformation and happiness doesn’t begin with noise.

It begins with the quiet power of the unexploitable within.