Movies: Lav Diaz

Lieutenant Hermes Papauran, one of the best investigators in the Philippines, is at a deep moral crossroads. He is a first-hand witness of the murderous anti-drug campaign conducted by his force, his anxiety and guilt triggering a severe skin disease...

Hong Sang-Soo’s Lost in the Mountains (South Korea, 32min) the visitor is the supremely self-centred Mi-Sook, who drives to Jeonju on impulse to see her classmate Jin-Young – only to discover that her friend is having an affair with their married pro...

An artist struggles to finish his work while a storyline about a cult plays in his head. As the cult spirals towards a fundamentalism that will destroy the world, the artist decides to destroy his muse to redeem the world....

In dreary Porac Pampanga, a young man, Daniel, abandons his motherland after winning the biggest cash prize in the history of Philippine lottery. Five years later, he is searching for home and redemption through the people that make up his past. Wit...

Galvez seeking for justice....

Three illegal miners journey back to their island after months of toiling in hellish conditions. With their hard-earned money, they traversed the sea, the mountains and the forest until they reached their destination. Or did they really reach their c...

A counselor/psychiatrist suspects a lingering case of phantosmia, a phantom smell, and possibly caused by a deep psychological fracture....

When a Filipino teenager is shot to death in New Jersey, a probe takes place and reveals the struggles of the Filipino community in the USA and the horrifying effects of methamphetamine on its youth....

A young woman recalls how her father (a fallen priest), her mother (a woman with a secret past) and her teenage sister returned with her to live in their ancestral home after the family business failed. She was plagued with mysterious problems of sle...

To this day, Ishmael Bernal's movie Himala is still in our town, in our world. This will be reflected in the broader perspective of the majority, of the surrounding events. Beliefs still lie in the truth. Consciousness is still dominant at the level ...

Philippines, late 1970s. A military-controlled militia is oppressing a remote village, spreading terror both physical and psychological. The fearless young doctor Lorena who opened a clinic for the poor disappears without a trace. Her husband, activi...

A Filipino poet hearkens back to his village after spending years in Europe. Horrified to discover that the community has been buried under landslides, he begins wandering through the countryside, reconnecting with friends, lovers and family members ...

Jingle Chordbook Magazine, first published in 1970, promptly taught a generation of Filipinos to play the guitar. Its story also explores how a small independent publication survived the weight of its time – the dark Martial Law years – and how it in...

sequel to "Heremias Book One : The Legend of the Lizard Princess"...

In this whimsical historical fresco, a counterpoint to today’s urgent political issues, the figure of the Filipino revolutionary Rizal is revisited in the light of early silent films....

Having Cuba as a background, decadent and in crisis, in a black-and-white lacerated by the Caraibic swinging rain, Alex and Edith, a couple in their 30s, live their love story made of small daily gestures, stories from the past, nostalgia, and a deep...

Documentary profiling the directors involved in the loose Philippine New Wave filmmaking movement....

Colossal explores the complexities of grief and the process of grieving as understood through the myth of a Man as he ventures through shifting landscapes ruminating....

Erwin Romulo, the late Alexis Tioseco’s best friend, recalls the events after the critic and his girlfriend Nika Bohinc’s untimely death in their home in Quezon City. Diaz makes use of one long take to allow Romulo an uninterrupted narration of the e...

In the southern Philippine city of Cebu, a troubled detective struggles to solve a series of grisly killings, while a deep conspiracy works to keep the truth just out of his reach....