President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. assuaged public worries on the controversial foreign movie “Barbie,” saying it is a “work of fiction.”

In a chance interview on the sidelines of his official engagements in Northern Samar on Friday, including the inauguration of the 11.607-kilometer Samar Pacific Coastal Road project in Laoang town, Marcos echoed the earlier expert opinion of the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) that a scene in the movie has nothing to do with nine-dash line claim of China in the disputed South China Sea.

In 2016, the Hague-based Permanent Court of Arbitration ruled as illegal the so-called nine-dash line, which Beijing uses to illustrate its claims on at least 80 percent of the South China Sea, and that the invisible demarcation overlaps with the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone.

“Maganda raw eh, sabi nila (It’s a good one, according to them),” Marcos said of the film.

In response to concerns regarding the alleged tackling of China’s territorial claims, Marcos said the depiction of the boundary line is part of the movie.

“Ang sagot ko doon (My reply to that), what do you expect? It’s a work of fiction,” he said.

The Movie and Television Review and Classification Board will not ban the movie after it “exhausted all possible resources in arriving at the decision, including getting advice from the DFA.”

“The Board believes that, all things considered, it has no basis to ban the film Barbie as there is no clear nor outright depiction of the ‘nine-dash-line’ in the subject film, in comparison to films such as Abominable’ and Uncharted,” read the letter signed by MTRCB chairperson Diorella Maria Sotto-Antonio and shared to the media on Tuesday. (PNA)