The guest of honor and president of the International Jury at the 33rd African, Asian, and Latin American Film Festival will be Lav Diaz, one of the most celebrated directors in contemporary art cinema. Lav has won numerous awards at major international festivals, including a Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 2016.

We have also dedicated a special tribute to this visionary filmmaker in collaboration with Fondazione Prada, which has chosen him as the protagonist of Soggettiva, a section of its programming that each month focuses on a significant figure in the world of cinema. The tribute includes a masterclass moderated by Paolo Bertolin, the screening of three of his most important films, Norte, the End of History (2013), From What is Before (2014) and The Woman Who Left (2016) (the first two subtitled in English, the third in Italian) and Taxibol, a film by Tommaso Santambrogio selected in the Extr’A Competition, featuring Lav Diaz as the lead actor.

The complete schedule

Fabian (Sid Lucero), a disillusioned intellectual sickened by the corruption and apathy in his country, commits a double murder to save a woman from a usurer making her life unbearable. However, Joaquin (Archie Alemania), the woman’s husband, is wrongly accused and sentenced to life in prison, leaving his wife and children alone. While Joaquin experiences a spiritual transformation in prison, Fabian continues to torment himself over the crime he committed.

Presented in the Un Certain Regard section of the 2013 Cannes Film Festival, Norte, the End of History draws inspiration from Dostoevsky’s literary masterpiece “Crime and Punishment,” exploring the origins of evil in Ilocos Norte, the northernmost province of the Philippines and birthplace of Ferdinand Marcos, the military dictator who subdued the country for twenty years. In his eleventh feature film, Diaz abandons black-and-white photography for a film rich in color and strong contrasts, creating an epic and monumental work that tells a story of violence, hatred, and fear with images of extraordinary dramatic and visual power.

In a small village in the Philippines, mysterious events begin to unfold. Strange moans are heard coming from the forest, several houses are set on fire, and some cows are found mutilated. Ruthless militia troops start to patrol entire rural areas of the country as President Ferdinand E. Marcos prepares to impose martial law nationwide.

A year after Norte, the End of History, Lav Diaz returns behind the camera to create one of the most dramatic films in his filmography about the history of the Filipino people and one of the most emblematic works of his poetics. Presented in competition at the Locarno Film Festival in 2014, where it won the Golden Leopard for Best Film, From What is Before portrays the devastating effects of the authoritarian turn of the Marcos dictatorship on the daily lives of the inhabitants of a small village in the north of the Philippines. The film is a grandiose work in which Diaz returns to the black-and-white he favors and the stylistic hallmarks of a cinema lucid and consistent with its own responsibilities: “From What is Before assumes the guise of a true film-summa on the political, philosophical, and cinematic thought of the Filipino filmmaker: within it one finds the incisive political invective, the resounding humanist spirit, the ecstatic lyricism, the power of the natural element, the reflection on the unfortunate fate of the intellectual, the relationship between man and his land. Once again renouncing the centrality of the urban and focusing his gaze on the rugged countryside, Diaz orchestrates a polyphony of dying voices, destined to speak without preserving memory of their words”. (Raffaele Meale)

Lavrente Indico Diaz, artistically known as Lav Diaz, is a Filipino director, screenwriter, producer, and actor born in 1958. Considered one of the most original directors on the contemporary cinema scene, he has described the darkest chapters of the history of his country in his films crudely and with profound lyricism. Since 1998, he has made eighteen feature films and won a number of international awards, such as the prize for the Best Film at the Singapore Festival with Batang west side (2001), the Horizons prize at the Venice Film Festival for Death in the Land of Encantos (2007) and for Melancholia (2008), the Golden Pardo at the Locarno Film Festival for From What Is Before (2014), the Silver Bear for A Lullaby to the Sorrowful Mystery at the Berlin Film Festival in 2016 and the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival forThe Woman Who Left (2016).

Navigating the characteristic and decaying streets of Cuba, Lav Diaz – the renowned Filipino director – and Gustavo Flecha – a talkative Cuban taxi driver – find themselves discussing politics, migration, social conditions, and love. During their discussions, however, the true reason behind the director’s presence in Cuba emerges: Lav is searching for a mysterious former general who fled the Philippines at the end of the Marcos dictatorship.

The film is in competition in the Extr’A section of FESCAAAL.

  

Horacia (Charo Santos-Concio), a former elementary school teacher, spent thirty years in a women’s prison for a crime she did not commit. When a fellow inmate confesses to the crime, Horacia is released and sets out to find her missing son, Junior. During her search, the woman discovers the changes that have occurred in her country. It is the 1990s, and in the Philippines, corruption and kidnappings are rampant, terrorizing the population.

In 2016, Lav Diaz arrived at the Venice Film Festival with The Woman Who Left, a stunning and immense film that tells the painful parable of an innocent woman, driven by ideals of solidarity and compassion, who is forced to contend with an unexpected desire for revenge. The starting point for the film, a Golden Lion winner in Diaz’s career, is the story by Leo Tolstoy, God Sees the Truth, which allows Diaz to reflect once again on recurring themes in his filmography: good and evil, punishment and crime. The result is an imposing work that abandons the contemplative and ecstatic instances of previous films to approach the stylistic features of the noir genre, and which testifies, once again, to the need for Lav Diaz for a political and militant cinema.

“When Diaz is accused of directing ‘unbearable’ or ‘cryptic’ ” it is a knowing lie: the expository clarity and purity of his cinema cannot be questioned. One can be repelled, as is legitimate, but facing the unstoppable crescendo of the last hour of The Woman Who Left is truly difficult to remain indifferent. And that desperate and paranoid ending, yet finally so reunited with the human, and its necessities, between Dreyer and Lang, moves..” (Cristina Piccino)

Lav Diaz, in his role as president of the International Jury, will also be among the guests at the FESCAAAL33 Awards Ceremony on Saturday, May 11th, at 8:30 PM at the Auditorium San Fedele..