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Lav Diaz’s “Phantosmia,” which has its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival in the out of competition section, has debuted its trailer.

The film centers on Hilarion Zabala, whose mysterious olfactory problem has recurred. A counselor/psychiatrist suspects it to be a lingering case of phantosmia, a phantom smell, and possibly caused by trauma, a deep psychological fracture. One recommended radical process to cure the ailment was that Hilarion must go back and deal with the darkest currents of his past life in the military service. Reassigned in the very remote Pulo Penal Colony, he must also confront the horrific realities of his present situation.

In a statement, the director asks: “Do human beings have the right to kill other human beings? A big part of the story of ‘Phantosmia’ is about this discourse, and other questions about man’s existence.”

He adds: “One of the main protagonists...

Lav Diaz is “concerned” about the situation in his native Philippines. But it doesn’t mean he will stop making films.

“If you do any kind of cultural work, you can be branded as a ‘communist’ and it’s a reason for them to kill you,” he says.

“There aren’t many venues to show my films, so we basically give them away for free. Listen, I am aware of the danger. But you have to accept the reality, confront these issues and continue to make things. And be careful, because we know what happened to Salman Rushdie.”

Diaz, speaking to Variety at Armenia’s Golden Apricot festival, where he headed the jury, also opened up about his upcoming Locarno world premiere “Essential Truths of the Lake.”

The film, which contends in main competition for the Golden Leopard, sees him returning to investigator Hermes Papauran from “When the Waves Are Gone,...

Films Boutique will handle international sales on Filipino master Lav Díaz’s “Essential Truths of The Lake,” one of the highest-profile titles in the just announced main International Competition at this year’s Locarno Festival.

The Berlin and Lyon-based production-sales company’s fifth collaboration with Diaz following, among others, Venice Golden Bear Winner “The Woman Who Left” and Berlin Silver Bear Winner “Lullaby To A Sorrowful Mystery,” “Essential Truths of The Lake” marks a prequel to Diaz’s ‘When The Waves Are Gone’ that premiered out of competition at Venice last year.

It reprises the character of the ethically conflicted police lieutenant Hermes Papauran, one of the best investigators of the Philippines. When asked what drives a man to search for the truth, Papauran says dejectedly that maybe he just wants to keep inflicting pain on himself.

Faced with Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s bloody murders and brazen lies, he...

The Locarno International Film Festival unveiled the full program for 2023 on Wednesday, with dozens of world premieres set to screen in the 76th edition of the Swiss festival.

Locarno’s main Piazza Grande section will include several of this season’s festival favorites, among them Cannes Palme d’Or winner Anatomy of a Fall from French director Justine Triet starring Sandra Hüller; Ken Loach’s latest (and possibly last) feature, The Old Oak; Noora Niasari’s Sundance audience award winner Shayda, featuring Holy Spider star Zar Amir Ebrahimi; and Molly Gordon and Nick Lieberman’s comedy Theater Camp, which won a special jury prize at Sundance. Other highlights include U.S. horror feature Falling Stars by directors Richard Karpala and Gabriel Bienczycki; Dammi from 71′ and White Boy Rick-helmer Yann Demange; and Magnetic Continent, the new nature documentary from March of the Penguins‘ filmmaker Luc Jacquet about the continent of Antarctica.

Lengthy running times have largely confined the films of Filipino director Lav Diaz to the festival circuit: His breakthrough “Evolution of a Filipino Family” was shot over 10 years and clocked in at over 10 hours, and subsequent features like “Melancholia” and “Norte, the End of History” followed suit. Diaz has been categorized as a practitioner of “slow cinema,” and this has made his work sound even more forbidding outside hardcore cinephile circles.

But “When the Waves Are Gone,” his current feature, is surprisingly approachable and engrossing, especially in its dynamic first third when we are introduced to our two protagonists: Hermes (John Lloyd Cruz), a cop and instructor at a police academy, and Primo (Ronnie Lazaro), a former cop who has just gotten out of jail after 10 years and is seeking vengeance against Hermes for helping to get him sentenced.

Hermes is known as a master investigator, and he has a...

My favorite thing about the Venice Film Festival …

It takes place in Venice. The place is just astonishing. You get to see great films, but you can still escape and see an art exhibition.

My ‘only in Venice’ moment was …

My biggest Venice moments have come when I wasn’t in Venice. We’ve had two films that won the Golden Lion — Alexander Sokurov’s Faust in 2011 and Lav Diaz’s The Woman Who Left in 2016. Both times I was already in Toronto when the announcement came.

The most inaccurate cliche about Italians that Venice proves wrong is …

I’m French, and there ...

My favorite thing about the Venice Film Festival …

It takes place in Venice. The place is just astonishing. You get to see great films, but you can still escape and see an art exhibition.

My ‘only in Venice’ moment was …

My biggest Venice moments have come when I wasn’t in Venice. We’ve had two films that won the Golden Lion — Alexander Sokurov’s Faust in 2011 and Lav Diaz’s The Woman Who Left in 2016. Both times I was already in Toronto when the announcement came.

The most inaccurate cliche about Italians that Venice proves wrong is …

I’m French, and there ...

Osaka Asian Film Festival 2021 announces the members of the Competition Jury and the Housen Short Film Award Jury.

Competition Jury Members

Ariyoshi Tsukasa (有吉司) / Japan / Representative of the movie distribution company Magic Hour

Ariyoshi was in charge of film programming at Tokyo Theatres Company Inc. for ten years. While there, he participated in the production of “Charisma” (1999) directed by Kurosawa Kiyoshi, and “Eureka” (2011) directed by Aoyama Shinji. After leaving the company, he founded Magic Hour. He has distributed the “McDull” series of Hong Kong animated films in Japan, the Iranian film “A Separation” (2011), the Filipino film “The Woman Who Left” (2016), the Danish film “Uncle” (2019), and the Vietnamese movie “Rom”, which will be screened at Oaff 2021.

Kimbara Yuka (金原由佳) / Japan / Film Journalist

Kimbara grew up in Kobe, Hyogo Prefecture. After graduating from Kwansei Gakuin University, she worked for a financial institution before entering the film industry. Over the past 30 years, she...

Seemingly stepping away from the bluntly combative political screed and satire of his last few films, “Genus Pan” finds preeminent Filipino auteur Lav Diaz in a more broadly philosophical mood. National leaders may remain caught in his languidly focused crosshairs, but only because he’s zoomed out to target humankind as a whole: From its ape-referencing title downwards, Diaz’s latest announces itself unsubtly as an unhappy allegory for the base, animalistic nature of man.

That highly generalized subject would appear to promise an especially sprawling, expansive work from a director known for his endurance-testing runtimes. Yet “Genus Pan” turns out to be Diaz’s shortest narrative feature since 2011’s “Elegy to the Visitor from the Revolution,” clocking in at a relatively jaunty 157 minutes, and paring the bulk of its narrative down to a minimalist, albeit unhurried, three-hander — expanded directly from “Hugaw,” his contribution to the 2018 portmanteau film “Lakbayan.” Like that short,...

Halted by Covid-19, and now part of Locarno’s The Films After Tomorrow competition, Lav Diaz’s “When the Waves Are Gone” looks set to mark the first time the Filipino auteur will enjoy the upsides of full-force international co-production.

That co-production involve, moreover, some of highest-profile art film producers currently working in Europe.

Winner of Locarno Golden Leopard (2014’s “From What Is Before”) and a Venice Golden Lion (2016’s “The Woman Who Left”), Díaz movies have been set apart not only by their extraordinary lengths – 2016’s “A Lullaby to the Sorrowful Mystery” clocked in at just over six hours – but also their lack of resources.

“It’s understood that Diaz’s low-budget techniques involve a certain suspension of belief: thus, we accept that a powerful dictator only seems to have a staff of two,” critic Jonathan Romney wrote of last year’s “The Halt,” a low-fi sci-fi drama set in a 2034 dystopia.

The films on this admittedly non-comprehensive list were not distributed by major studios, but by smaller specialty companies. They played for a couple of weeks (or less) in big cities, maybe even just one night in a museum. They weren’t on the multiplex radar at all. But to adventurous film audiences, they were a vital part of any discussion about cinema. They told complex stories ignored by major studios. The dug deeper into abstraction or discomfort. And they pushed at the edges of filmmaking practice in ways that will influence the mainstream in the future.

“Cemetery of Splendor” (2015)

A makeshift hospital on an ancient royal burial ground houses soldiers overcome with a mysterious sleeping sickness. Then they begin psychically communicating with the women who work there. Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s oblique, delicate story of historical memory and collective awakening that plays out like a dream.

“Did You Wonder Who Fired The Gun?...

Veteran Philippine filmmaker Lav Diaz and Edwin of Indonesia are among those to receive the latest round of cash from Purin Pictures as the Thai film fund announced its fall 2019 round of grants Friday.

Set up in 2017, Purin Pictures is a nonprofit fund aimed at supporting independent cinema in Southeast Asia.

Diaz, the Venice Golden Lion winner in 2016 with The Woman Who Left, picked up funding for his new project, the revenge thriller When the Waves Ares Gone. Indonesia’s Edwin, nominated for a Golden Bear in Berlin for 2012’s Postcards From the Zoo, was successful with the ...

Veteran Philippine filmmaker Lav Diaz and Edwin of Indonesia are among those to receive the latest round of cash from Purin Pictures as the Thai film fund announced its fall 2019 round of grants Friday.

Set up in 2017, Purin Pictures is a nonprofit fund aimed at supporting independent cinema in Southeast Asia.

Diaz, the Venice Golden Lion winner in 2016 with The Woman Who Left, picked up funding for his new project, the revenge thriller When the Waves Ares Gone. Indonesia’s Edwin, nominated for a Golden Bear in Berlin for 2012’s Postcards From the Zoo, was successful with the ...

Known for his epic–and epically long–films that examine the woeful past and troubled present of the Philippines, Lav Diaz has established an unmistakable name for himself and become a staple at A-list film festivals worldwide over the last decade.

He was awarded the Silver Bear Alfred Bauer Prize at the Berlinale for his 8-hour opus A Lullaby to the Sorrowful Mystery, the Golden Leopard at Locarno for the 5.5-hour From What Is Before, and won over Sam Mendes’ jury to take home the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 2016 for The Woman Who Left.

His latest feature, The Halt (4 hours and 36 minutes in case anyone is keeping score), premiered at the Directors’ Fortnight sidebar in Cannes earlier this year and screened recently at Filmfest Hamburg. It’s set in 2034, when volcanic eruptions have plunged Southeast Asia into darkness and the Philippines is ruled by a ruthless...

Lav Diaz is one of the most renowned directors from the Philippines. Born in 1958 as a son of two teachers, he started being interested in music and film early on. At the Mowelfund Film Institut he studied directing as well as film production, experimenting with various other media and disciplines such as photography and writing.

Most of the films Diaz directs are very long features, sometimes with a duration of several hours, focusing on the significance of the history of his country, its past, present and possible future. Features like “Lullaby to a Sorrowful Mystery”, “Norte, the End of History” and “The Woman Who Left” have brought Diaz to the attention of critics and audiences worldwide. For his work he has received numerous prizes, for example, the Golden Lion at Venice Film Festival or the Golden Leopard at Locarno Film Festival.

At this year’s Filmfest Hamburg, three of Diaz’s features were screened,...

“Joker” from director Todd Phillips won the Golden Lion, and “J’Accuse,” or “An Officer and a Spy,” from director Roman Polanski has won the Grand Jury Prize, the festival’s runner up prize, at the 76th edition of the Venice Film Festival.

The comic book film starring Joaquin Phoenix in an origin story of the iconic Batman villain beat out a lineup that also included films such as James Gray’s “Ad Astra” and Steven Soderbergh’s “The Laundromat” for the top prize.

“I want to thank Warner Bros. and DC for stepping out of their comfort zone and taking a big swing on me,” director Todd Phillips said as he accepted the Golden Lion.

Polanski’s “An Officer and a Spy” stars Jean Dujardin in a film about the Dreyfus Affair. His presence at the festival generated some backlash, as it’s his first film since the director...

With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options–not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves–each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit platforms. Check out this week’s selections below and an archive of past round-ups here.

Goodbye First Love (Mia Hansen-Løve)

One of the best coming-of-age films of the decade, what begins as a fairly standard, but intimately captured story of young passion quickly blossoms to one of the most mature takes on such an event thanks to Mia Hansen-Løve’s remarkably natural style and a script that’s conscious of time and its effects on love. Praise must also go to Lola Creton and Sebastian Urzendowsky for seemingly organic chemistry from such material. – Jordan R.

Where to Stream: Mubi (free for 30 days)

The Man From London (Béla Tarr and Ágnes Hranitzky)

Upon the release of The Man from London, one might...

With the year coming to its halfway mark, we recently rounded up the 21 most essential films to seek out thus far, and now it’s time to look towards the second half. July brings some festival favorites, some oddities, a few studio release highlights, and a floral fever dream. Check out our 15 picks to see below, followed by honorable mentions.

15. A Faithful Man (Louis Garrel; July 19)

Fluffier than the finest French pastries, Garrel’s latest film is a brisk romantic dramedy to the point of near-satire, which is more of a recommendation than a jab. Ethan Vestby was a fan at Tiff, saying in his review, “Beginning on a shot of the Paris cityscape–yes, the Eiffel Tower plainly in view and everything that surrounds it–Louis Garrel’s A Faithful Man self-awarely announces itself in the tradition of decades of French cinema; say the kind that the average movie-goer...

Diaz’s black and white sci-fi is set in in Filipino capital Manila in 2034.

Paris-based Indie Sales has acquired international sales rights to Filipino filmmaker Lav Diaz’s black and white sci-fi work The Halt, ahead of its premiere in Directors’ Fortnight.

The drama is set in Filipino capital Manila in 2034, which has been enveloped in darkness ever since massive volcanic eruptions in the Celebes Sea three years prior deprived Southeast Asia of sunlight.

It is a world in which “madmen control countries, communities, enclaves and new bubble cities. Cataclysmic epidemics ravage the continent. Millions have died and millions more...

Every week, IndieWire asks a select handful of film critics two questions and publishes the results on Monday.

Last week, Uproxx published an article called “Attack of the Two Hour and 20 Minute Movies!,” in which writer Vince Mancini bemoaned a rash of supposedly overlong films at a time when many indies run 80-something minutes, and streaming services allow viewers to binge more extended content in the comfort of their own homes. This Friday, Lee Chang-dong’s 148-minute “Burning” and the even longer “Suspiria” will open in limited release, continuing what Mancini believes to be a nefarious trend.

This week’s question: Are movies too long these days?

Carlos Aguilar (@Carlos_Film), The Wrap, MovieMaker Magazine, Remezcla



Conventional notions regarding running times or attention spans don’t apply to the works of Filipino master Lav Diaz, who continues to tell expansive stories that make zero promises of mass appeal. He has...

The Singapore Media Festival will spotlight the Philippines under its second-annual country in focus program.

The event, set for Nov. 29 to Dec. 9, will showcase content, talent and performances from the Asian nation. Chosen in part due to the 2018 celebration of 100 Years of Filipino Cinema, as well as Singapore’s current chairmanship of Asean (Assn. of Southeast Asian Nations), the Philippines has in recent years emerged as one of Asia’s most promising filmmaking nations.

Over the past decade, Filipino cinema has struck a strong balance between critically acclaimed, award-winning films and audience-friendly movies that have broken box office records. Esteemed Filipino filmmakers include Lav Diaz and Brillante Mendoza: Diaz took home took home the Golden Lion at the 2016 Venice Film Festival for “The Woman Who Left,” while Mendoza’s film “Kinatay” won the director award at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival.

On an audience level, Filipino movies have shattered box office numbers in recent years,...

No director embodies the split between the attention spans of commercial audiences and film festival-goers quite like Lav Diaz. The Filipino auteur, who often only does one go-for-broke take for each shot, has cranked out as much as 12 hours of cinema in a year’s span. That might be one monumental work, like 2004’s 10-hour “Evolution of a Filipino Family” or split across two features, such as 2016’s “A Lullaby to a Sorrowful Mystery” (eight hours) and the Golden Lion-winning “The Woman Who Left” (four hours).

The latest film from Norte, The End of History director Lav Diaz, takes us into the heart of darkness, but at four hours it’s a frustrating experience

There can hardly be a deeper, darker vale of tears at this year’s Berlin film festival than Season of the Devil, the stylised yet starkly austere, four-hour film in black and white from Filipino director Lav Diaz, about the brutal period of martial law imposed on his country by President Marcos in the 1970s. I have had mixed responses to Diaz’s films recently: I admired the grandeur and mystery of his “Russian adaptations”, that is, his The Woman Who Left (2016), a version of Tolstoy’s story God Sees the Truth, But Waits; and Norte, The End of History (2013), a loose reworking of Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment. Sometimes however, the sheer opacity and impenetrability of his film-making, and of course...

Following up his Golden Lion-winning drama The Woman Who Left, Lav Diaz is returning to Berlinale 2018 with his latest film, Ang Panahon ng Halimaw aka Season of the Devil. Described as an “anti-musical musical, a rock opera, that delves into mythology,” the first trailer has now arrived ahead of the premiere in competition later this month.

According to The National, the film features 33 songs composed by the Filipino director himself and the story, which takes place during former president Ferdinand Marcos’s military dictatorship, follows “a man whose wife has been abducted in their remote village.”

Starring Piolo Pascual, Shaina Magdayao, Pinky Amador, Bituin Escalante, Hazel Orencio, Joel Saracho, Bart Guingona, Angel Aquino, Lilit Reyes, and Don Melvin Boongaling, see the trailer below via CineMaldito.

Season of the Devil will premiere at Berlinale 2018.

With the jury winners announced this past weekend (see at the bottom), the 73rd Venice International Film Festival has now come to an end. As always, it was a strong kick-off to the fall festivals, with some premieres of dramas that we’ll see over the next few months, as well as a great many that won’t arrive until next year (or perhaps later, pending distribution). We’ve wrapped up the festival by selecting our 9 favorite films, followed by our complete coverage. Check out everything below and let us know what you’re most looking forward to.

Austerlitz (Sergei Loznitsa)

Having experimented with feature-length fiction films, shorts, and archival-footage documentaries in the course of his career, Sergei Loznitsa’s output since his 2014 Ukrainian crisis documentary Maidan has both garnered him greater acclaim than before and zeroed in on cinema as a collectively generated form. – Tommaso T. (full review)

Hacksaw Ridge...

Lav Diaz’s The Woman Who Left from the Philippines won the Golden Lion at the 73rd Venice Film festival on Saturday while Emma Stone claimed the Coppa Volpi best actress prize for La La Land and Oscar Martínez took actor honours for El Ciudadano Ilustre.

The Silver Lion – grand jury prize went to Tom Ford’s Nocturnal Animals and the Silver Lion award for best director was a tie between Andrei Konchalovsky for Paradise and Amat Escalante for The Untamed.

Noah Oppenheim prevailed in the screenplay category for Jackie, while Ana Lily Amirpour earned a special jury prize for The Bad Batch.

Venice Winners In Full

Golden Lion for best film

The Woman Who Left (Ang Babaeng Humayo; Philippines) by Lav Diaz

Silver Lion – grand jury prize

Nocturnal Animals (USA) by Tom Ford

Silver Lion award for best director (tie)

Andrei Konchalovsky, Paradise (Cis)

Amat Escalante, The Untamed (La Región Salvaje, Mexico-Denmark-France-Germany- Norway-Switzerland...

It’s a good day to be an American in Venice. Tom Ford‘s “Nocturnal Animals” took the grand jury prize at the 73rd annual film festival, with Emma Stone also landing Best Actress Silver Cup for her turn in “La La Land.” The top prize, Venice’s Golden Lion for Best Film, however, went to “The Woman Who Left,” directed by Lav Diaz. Also Read: 'Planetarium' Venice Review: Natalie Portman Goes Bilingual in Lush, Forgettable Drama Read a complete list of winners below. More to come… Updating Winners: Best Film, Golden Lion “The Woman Who Left,...

Nigerian metropolis Lagos is the focus of the eighth City To City showcase at the Toronto International Film Festival (Tiff) as top brass anoint two international Rising Stars.

Tiff’s latest line-up announcement also featured extra selections in Galas and Special Presentations, among them Walter Hill’s (Re)Assignment, Philippe Falardeau’s The Bleeder, David Leveaux’ The Exception (pictured), Ken Loach’s Palme d’Or winner I, Daniel Blake and Terry George’s drama The Promise.

A vibrant crop of Contemporary World Cinema entries includes Kleber Mendonça Filho’s Aquarius, Danis Tanović’s Death In Sarajevo, Marie Noëlle’s Marie Curie, The Courage Of Knowledge and Akin Omotoso’s Vaya.

Hirokazu Kore-eda brings After The Storm to the Masters showcase, alongside Marco Bellocchio’s Sweet Dreams, Pedro Almodóvar’s Julieta, Cristian Mungiu’s Graduation, Gianfranco Rosi’s Berlin Golden Bear winner Fire At Sea and Adoor Gopalakrishnan’s Once Again.

Rounding out the...

Nigerian capital Lagos is the focus of the eighth City To City showcase at the Toronto International Film Festival (Tiff) as top brass anoint two international Rising Stars.

Tiff’s latest line-up announcement also featured extra selections in Galas and Special Presentations, among them Walter Hill’s (Re)Assignment, Philippe Falardeau’s The Bleeder, David Leveaux’ The Exception (pictured), Ken Loach’s Palme d’Or winner I, Daniel Blake and Terry George’s drama The Promise.

A vibrant crop of Contemporary World Cinema entries includes Kleber Mendonça Filho’s Aquarius, Danis Tanović’s Death In Sarajevo, Marie Noëlle’s Marie Curie, The Courage Of Knowledge and Akin Omotoso’s Vaya.

Hirokazu Kore-eda brings After The Storm to the Masters showcase, alongside Marco Bellocchio’s Sweet Dreams, Pedro Almodóvar’s Julieta, Cristian Mungiu’s Graduation, Gianfranco Rosi’s Berlin Golden Bear winner Fire At Sea and Adoor Gopalakrishnan’s Once Again.

Rounding out the...