Maria Ressa is a journalist and Co-Founder and CEO of the investigative news website Rappler, which is based in the Phillipines.
She won the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts to champion press freedom amid political harassment from the Duterte government.
As CEO, she faced multiple arrests, posting bail ten times to remain free. Her struggle for truth is captured in the Sundance documentary, A Thousand Cuts.
In 2022, she joined the UN’s Internet Governance Forum as Vice-Chair and became a Carnegie Distinguished Fellow. Maria also authored several influential books, including How to Stand Up to a Dictator
The new Sci-Fi documentary directed by Asif Kapadia, 2073, features the voice of Maria Ressa. It has shown at the Venice and BFI film festivals and the voices of Carol Cadwalladr, Anne Applebaum and Tristan Harris are also in the film. It’s equal parts documentary and dystopian sci-fi thriller and uses 2024 as the starting point when things could have gone the other way.
Irresistible caught up with Maria at the 2024 Ubud Writers and Readers Festival, for the second chapter of Irresistible TV, where we talked elections, her core message, and all our futures.
