Magalhães (Magellan): Lav Diaz revisits Magellan’s final colonial expedition to the Philippines
In Magalhães (Magellan), presented in the Cannes Première Selection, the Filipino filmmaker Lav Diaz focuses on the final months in the life of Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan, who died in the Philippines in 1521. He paints an intimate, haunting portrait of a man facing his own demons.
Twenty-seven years after making his debut, Lav Diaz has established himself as a major teller of stories in world cinema. His films are at the crossroads of history and collective memory, exploring with a rare intensity the scars of the colonial past and the social injustices plaguing the Philippines. Using a radical style — long static shots in black and white, and haunting silences — he continues to create work that is at once political and sensory.
Magalhães (Magellan), the result of seven years of research, continues in this vein — a three-hour epic where formal purity works as a meditation on power, conquest, and the illusions of the myth of civilization. The film retraces Magellan’s final months, embroiled in a fatal confrontation with indigenous peoples, leading up to his death on the island of Mactan in April 1521.
Gael García Bernal in the title role embodies a man who is haunted by his visions, dogged by the voices of the people he claims to discover. “It’s a film about how power intoxicates and the myth of discovery”, explains Lav Diaz. “Here, Magellan is no hero, he is a man facing his own oblivion.”
Filmed between the Philippines, Portugal, and Spain — in particular in Cadiz on board a replica of the Victoria, the expedition’s three-masted vessel — Magalhães (Magellan) continues to revisit the official accounts that he set out to explore in his early work. Ever faithful to his commitment, Lav Diaz gives a voice to those who have been forgotten by history and confirms his status as an uncompromising filmmaker.
