Venice Film Festival: Lav Diaz, the engagement of the Filipino filmmaker in "a word, a gesture, a silence"

Filipino director Lav Diaz will present his new film “Genus Pan” at the 2020 Venice Film Festival. © Siegfried Forster / RFI

Text by: Siegfried Forster Follow

2 min

The 77th edition of the Venice Film Festival will open its doors on Wednesday September 2. Filipino director Lav Diaz, Golden Lion 2016, returns with “Genus Pan”. In 2019, during the release of “Halte”, a story that takes place in the Philippines in 2034 showing the resilience of a country struck by a terrible epidemic, he explained to us his cinematographic commitment in “A word, a gesture, a silence ”. 

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His cinema is unique, aesthetic, combative. Lav Diaz's works represent an experience that is both joyful and formidable, between apocalypse and discourse of emancipation. Despite the darkness of his stories, the filmmaker, 61, who grew up under the reign of dictator Marcos, remains deeply optimistic. 

Four years after winning the Golden Lion with  The Woman Who Left , the Filipino director returns to the 2020 Venice Film Festival with  Genus Pan . The new work promises to be a filmic, metaphorical and unfiltered critique of President Duterte's current government in the Philippines. 

"  One day I was asked to define Man, what are called human beings, supposed to belong to a higher species of planet Earth, and due to the urgency of the moment, for an answer quick, all I could put together was an animal simulation,  ”Lav Diaz wrote in the intent note for his new film.

In the video interview  A word, a gesture, a silence , his gesture imitating the powerful jaws of a crocodile refers to this observation that challenges us.

Lav Diaz, the engagement of the Filipino filmmaker in "a word, a gesture, a silence"

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  • Venice Film Festival
  • Cinema
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