A Thousand Cuts follows the story of Maria Ressa, the founder of the Filipino news site Rappler, and her conflict with the government under Rodrigo Duterte. We see the struggle for democracy and freedom of the press as very familiar tactics are used on the populace to turn them towards populism (e.g. Inflammatory rhetoric, bots and trolls, social media). We track Ressa's two arrests for "cyber libel" and the campaign for seats in the Philippine senate. Ressa herself is a hopeful figure, but the overall picture looks grim.