Magellan

Director Lav Diaz IN PERSON for Q&A moderated by HP Mendoza after the advance screening on Monday, January 5!

At the dawn of the modern era, Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan (Gael García Bernal) navigated a fleet of ships to Southeast Asia, attempting the first voyage across the vast Pacific Ocean. On reaching the Malay Archipelago, the crew pushed to the brink of madness in the harshness of the high seas and overwhelming natural beauty of the islands, Magellan’s obsession leads to a rebellion and reckoning with the consequences of power. A vast, globe-spanning epic from Filipino filmmaker Lav Diaz (Norte, The End of History), Magellan presents the colonization of the Philippines as a primal, shocking encounter with the unknown and a radical retelling of European narratives of discovery and exploration.

“Ferdinand Magellan was never regarded as a great man of history, and Lav Diaz’s surprisingly conventional––if still hypnotically paced––biopic uses genre structure to act as a further repudiation of his legacy” – The Film Stage

“In a film that depicts an unhealthy and violent exchange between Portugal and the Philippines, the idea of the greatest cinema artist of the latter waving towards the spirit of the greatest of the former is the kind of cross-cultural interaction that’s altogether fleeting and ephemeral, but worth reaching towards“ – Reverse Shot

Co-Presented by SOMA Pilipinas

Magellan will open at The Roxie on January 16. More showtimes will be added soon.