Veteran Filipino director Lav Diaz will be participating anew in the Venice International Film Festival after his unexpected “Makikiraan Po” was selected for this year’s line-up.
The full list of entries for the 83rd edition of the world’s oldest film festival was unveiled last July 23, Thursday, with Diaz’s movie chosen to screen out of competition.
The film with the English title “Let Us Through, Dear Ancestors” is the director’s latest project since last year’s “Magellan” starring Gael Garcia Bernal as the Portuguese explorer.
“Magellan” premiered at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival and was submitted by the Philippines as its entry for the Oscars, although it did not make the shortlist for nominations.
Cinephiles had anticipated that Diaz would submit a movie called “Kawalan” to Venice, which he’s frequented several times, but instead caught everyone off guard with a film set in 1617 Philippines, right in the middle of the Spanish colonization.
“Makikiraan Po” sees Bart Guingona as a Spanish friar and encomendero seeking to “tame” natives through Catholicism and is overseeing the construction of a church.
The priest tasks his son Dungwen (Christian Bables) – which was the film’s original title – to supervise the transport of precious limestone, risking attacks from natives. Also in the film are Isabel Sandoval, Yul Servo, Rafa Siguion-Reyna, Amado Arjay Babon, Hazel Orencio and Ronnie Lazaro. The latter two are frequent collaborators of Diaz, with Orencio also serving as a line producer.
Sandoval, whose “Lingua Franca” and “Shangri-La” have premiered at Venice, like Bables are working with Diaz for the very first time.
This marks Servo’s first movie in about a decade, having dedicated part of his career to politics, and an apt return at that as his first film ever was Diaz’s “Batang West Side.”
“Makikiraan Po” is produced by Bianca Balbuena and Montgomery Blencowe, husband of actress Lovi Poe.
Diaz’s personal connection to Venice includes his “Melancholia” winning the Orizzonti Grand Prize in 2008 and receiving the 2016 Golden Lion for “Ang Babaeng Humayo” starring Charo Santos-Concio.
He also won Best Director of the Horizons section in 2020 for “Genus, Pan,” closed the section’s 2007 edition with “Kagadanan sa Banwaan ning mga Engkanto,” and premiered “Siglo ng Pagluluwal” (2011), “Kapag Wala Nang Mga Alon” (2022), and “Phantosmia” (2024) at the festival.
Elsewhere in Venice this year, the 1981 movie “The Story of Woo Viet” starring Chow Yun-Fat and a co-production of the Philippines is screening in the Classics section.