[Insurrecto] begins in the present, when a Filipina writer and translator, Magsalin, agrees to help a stylish, young Sofia Coppola-esque American director, Chiara, who is making a film about a forgotten 1901 atrocity in which American occupiers retaliated against a Filipino uprising. After Magsalin reads Chiara’s script, she writes one of her own, and soon we’re reading two competing versions of historical events — one from the perspective of a white American socialite photographer, the other from the point of view of a Filipina schoolteacher. In the end, both Magsalin and Chiara believe they have failed in telling a true account of the event—but Apostol has not.