Lav Diaz wins best director award in Venice for his new film, ‘Lahi, Hayop (Genus Pan)’

Filipino author Lav Diaz wins the Best Director award in the Orizzonti u Horizons Section at this year’s Venice International Film Festival for his latest work, “Lahi, Hayop (Genus Pan).”

Considered the arthouse section, Horizons runs parallel to the main competition of the oldest film festival in the world. The director of the Orrizonti jury is the French director Claire Denis. For the main competition, Cate Blanchett is the president of the jury.

Known for his epic movies that sometimes last up to 11 hours, Diaz’s “Lahi, Hayo (Genus Pan)” is reported to be just two hours and 37 minutes long.

As described on the Facebook page “Lahi, Hayop”, the film is about “… the journey of three illegal miners back to their island after months of hard work in hellish conditions. With the money that they cost so much to earn, they crossed the sea, the mountains and the forest until they reached their destination ”.

Check out the trailer here:

Besides being a director, Díaz also served as a writer, editor and cinematographer.

The cast members are familiar faces from Diaz’s previous films. It is not by chance but many are from the theater circuit. They are Tanghalang Pilipino Artistic Director Fernando “Tata Nanding” Josef, Actors’ Actors, Inc.-The Needed Theater’s founding Artistic Director, Bart Guingona, and Taumbayan owner Joel Saracho. Taumbayan is a bar and live performance venue in Quezon City frequented by theater actors and independent musicians, like a second home.

The three miners are Paulo (played by Guingona), Baldo (played by Josef) and Andrés played by DM Boongaling.

Josef said he is grateful to Díaz for not only giving her a leading role, but this time, for being a “contravida.” Baldo, his character, is the oldest and hardest of the three miners.

“I’m used to playing a priest, or an old man na mabait, kinakawawa, inaapi tapos lumalaban,” he joked at a Zoom conference organized by Orencio a few hours before the gala screening of the film at Sala Darsena, Lido , in Venice. on September 11 (Manila time).

Guingona plays Paulo Homero, described as “the one praying among the three miners who walked his way back home.”

“My role here is kind, like in most of Lav’s movies. So I want to ask him to cast me as a bad boy in the future, ”Guingona joked.

Boongaling plays the youngest miner of the three, “Andrew full of anguish.”

“The brain is the most confused, they cannot feel what they are going through,” Boongaling said.

Saracho is Diaz’s favorite choice for villain roles. So for this movie, he is part of the “mortal trio” made up of Sarhento (played by Noel Sto. Domingo) and Kapitan (Popo Diaz.)

Veteran folk rock artist Lolita Carbon also has a special cameo called “Nanang Mamay.” She sang an “a cappella” composed by Lav Díaz.

Thank you and I am here. My friends were shocked. I was kidding, when I became a senior then I did this. I announce my role to my friends, even if it is only a brief act. I am the one who repeats. The song Lav did was challenging, but it was so beautiful, “Carbon said.

Before Carbon became a soloist, she was the lead singer and songwriter for the legendary 1970s folk rock trio Asin or Salt of The Earth. In the 1990s, she formed Nene Band, whose hit “Biyaheng Langit” was released. became a classic.

Other members of the cast are Merly Bucong and Elvira Dayandante.

As in most of Diaz’s films, the supporting cast members also worked behind the camera. Hazel Orencio played Mariposa, Baldo’s daughter, and also served as a production manager and assistant director.

Popo said he was originally the official cook on set with art director Robinne Martillano. Ceecil Buban was the production designer and was also a production assistant, along with Rosalyne Tarquian Tarnate and Qi Perez. The production coordinator was Mario Tarquian and the driver during filming was Bogs Derla.

During Zoom’s aforementioned cast and crew reunion, which served as a “virtual salubong” before the gala night, Orencio revealed that the film was shot for a total of 15 days.

First came the nine days of filming in December 2017 on Culion Island in Palawan. They continued shooting for a few days in January 2018 and were interrupted in February. The final days of filming at Tanay ended in March 2018.

Orencio said the film was originally part of the “Lakbayan” film trilogy with Brillante Mendoza and Kidlat Tahimik. It was originally a short film entitled “Ang Mito ng Isla Hugaw”, with a duration of 37 minutes.

“But Lav had no intention, even back then, to expand to the length of the show,” he said.

“No one expected this to be the first out. Many are aligned, but here are those who entered Venice, “he added.

It can be recalled that a few months before the pandemic began, Diaz was reported to be filming the John Lloyd Cruz comeback movie, titled “Servando Magdamag,” an adaptation of a Ricky Lee short story.

Like a homecoming

Orencio said Diaz’s recent win in the Orrizonti section is like a homecoming.

It was in Venice that Díaz began to gain a cult following among moviegoers, film scholars, and students in Europe. In 2007, his “Death in the Land of Charms” won a special mention award. In 2008, she came back wanting to win the best film award at the Orrizonti.

In 2010, Díaz was a member of the jury. In 2011, her “Century Of Birthing (Sigo Ng Pagluluwal)” was shown as an exhibition film.

But it was in 2016 that he made the biggest wave at the oldest film festival in the world. Four years ago, she won the Golden Lion Award, the highest award given to a film in the main competition, for “Ang Babaeng Humayo (The Woman Who Gone).”

It was the comeback film for ABS-CBN content director Charo Santos-Concio after she retired from her role as CEO and president. She played the lead role of a woman jailed on false charges who now seeks revenge with the help of a transvestite gay man played by John Lloyd Cruz.

“This is for my country, for the Filipino people and the struggle of humanity,” Diaz said at the time.

What the critics say, the critics

“Lahi, Hayop” has started to gain recognition from critics and critics in Europe.

In his review for the UK online magazine The Upcoming (theupcoming.uk), Joseph Owen said: “A story about three men (Paulo, Baldo and Andres) who live in a small community. Their relationships seem to be determined primarily by debts and obligations: who owes money to whom; the metaphysical nature of the transactions (“A deal is a deal”); and the frustrations caused by intimate and small-scale commerce. “

“Díaz frames his interactions with studied simplicity. The land below and the trees around it take on an omnipresent tactile quality, calling the trio back to genesis and their ancestral states. “

Le Polyster, a French online magazine, said in its review: “Behind the desperate idea that the truth is just another legend, ‘Genus Pan’ is an elegy of unforgettable beauty.”

Raffaele Meale of the Italian film critic magazine “Quinlan” wrote: “’Genus Pan’ at the same time has all the trappings of the director’s poetics and humor, and contains pages of cinema so pure that they dazzle the eye, so granite and powerful in its simplicity that leaves you completely powerless. “

Rouven Linnarz from the German online film magazine “film-rezensionen.de” wrote: “’Lahi, Hayop’ is a drama about whether humans can emancipate themselves from their dark impulses. Lav Díaz tells an often very dark and sobering story about the nature of humans as the cause of suffering, brutality and superstition, but he still leaves a back door open, because he secretly believes that it is in the power of humanity to change. life circumstances. “

Hyun Jin Cho, director of the London Korean Film Festival who writes for the BFI UK website, said: “After a permit from their jobs at a gold mine, three workers travel to their hometown on foot via the spectacular yet unforgiving nature of the mythical Hugaw Island As time passes and their conversations intensify, buried stories emerge and a sense of psychosis pervades the scene.

“As always, Lav Díaz’s exquisitely subdued black-and-white images and patient pacing lend a Brechtian register to the drama; Almost always shot from the same fixed distance, each scene is an immaculate vivid painting. Behind the film’s folkloric facade, Díaz once again taps into the collective memory of defiant struggles against the tyranny of contemporary Filipino society and colonial brutality, focusing on the timeless image of men walking, one of Pan’s key features. “

By the way, “Lahi, Hayop” was chosen for the official selection at the BFI London Film Festival in October.

It was also announced that “Lahi, Hayop” can be viewed via https://www.festivalscope.com/film/genus-pan/ for just US $ 6 or PHP 291.50. The viewing began on September 12 at 3am (Philippine time). Viewers have 30 hours to finish watching the movie.

As for his debut in a live theater screening in the Philippines, one of the drive-ins is expected to be able to accommodate him in the near future.

Check out the second trailer here: