NEW LAV DIAZ FILM: TAKE 4 IN VENICE
The 79th edition of the world’s oldest film festival has picked the Filipino auteur’s ‘Kapag Wala Nang Mga Alon’ (When the Waves are Gone) to screen Out of Competition (Fiction)
DIAZ SAID HE DOESN’T MIND WHERE HIS FILMS ARE SCREENED.
Lav Diaz has fond memories of Venice, specifically in the island of Lido in the Venice Lagoon.
Lido is the venue of the annual Venice International Film Festival, where three of Diaz’s works, 2008’s Melancholia, 2016’s Ang Babaeng Humayo (The Woman Who Left), and 2020’s Genus, Pan, won Best Film (Orizzonti or Horizons category), the Golden Lion (the fest’s highest prize) and Best Director (Horizons), respectively.
This year, the 79th edition of the world’s oldest film festival has picked Diaz’s Kapag Wala Nang Mga Alon (When the Waves are Gone) to screen Out of Competition (Fiction).
“It’s a great section pero parang para sa mga elder na (but it seems suited for the elder audience), hahaha,” Diaz, 63, told Daily Tribune in jest.
The film’s plot, as described in international media, concerns “two best friends who rob a bank. One goes to jail, the other takes the money and rules over an island. Thirty years later, the prisoner is freed and embarks on a bloody trail of revenge against his old friend to reclaim all that he lost.”
In interviews with Philippine media, Diaz said it alludes to tokhang, the catchword of former President Rodrigo Duterte’s controversial, bloody drug war.
“It is about a police investigator whose soul is sinking in an abyss of guilt and shame because of the mass murders perpetrated by his own institution,” Diaz told Marinel Cruz of the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
The Filipino filmmaker, whose body of work has also been recognized in other international film festivals (2014’s Mula Sa Kung Ano Ang Noon,
Golden Leopard or the highest prize, Locarno; 2016’s Hele Sa Hiwagang Hapis, Berlin), said he doesn’t mind where his films are screened.
Venice is, of course, a major event, but “a small fishing village in Basilan is fine, “there’s no difference, really,”
Diaz said in the same interview.
“Don’t get me wrong. I’m not being hypocritical. Yes, the impact would definitely be immediate once it’s part of the so-called ‘official selection’ of Venice or other big festivals, but then, my cinema is never marketoriented or corporate-themed, so premiering in Venice, Cannes, Berlin, or in the really obscure and almost forgotten Fantastic Blind Whale International Film Festival, is the same,” he remarked.
“My cinema’s nature — black and white, long, dirty, slow — carries with it a notoriety that the so-called big-time corporate players and programmers of the festival circuit fear: ‘Where are we going to place this cinema, his stubborn cinema?’ There’s the irony — my cinema remains a pariah, something they want to avoid but couldn’t,” he continued.
“So, am I happy that it’s red-carpeting at the Lido? Yes, definitely… But let’s put things in proper perspective. I didn’t make the film for them. I made the film for cinema… I’ve gone to the Lido many times already, and the best times there were not on the red carpet or the hunt for the celebrities or the Lions. What I loved the most was the picking of wild blackberries in my favorite isolated area when I’m doing my early hikes.”
Kapag Wala Nang Mga Alon stars John Lloyd Cruz, Ronnie Lazaro, Shamaine Buencamino, Dido dela Paz and Don Melvin Boongaling.
The 79th Venice International Film Festival runs from 31 August to 10 September.