Magellan
Magellan
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2h 43m
Directed by Lav Diaz • 2025 • Philippines, Spain, Portugal
Starring Gael García Bernal, Ângela Azevedo, Amado Arjay Babon
A hypnotic journey engraved in images of staggering beauty and horror, this monumental achievement from acclaimed Filipino auteur Lav Diaz boldly rewrites the imperialist mythmaking of the Age of Discovery. Elegantly minimalist yet overpowering in its scale and impact, MAGELLAN follows the sixteenth-century Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan (Gael García Bernal) as he embarks on his epochal quest to cross the Pacific—a voyage that spirals into zealotry and violence when he attempts to impose Christianity upon the people of the Philippines. Abetted by Bernal’s radically antiheroic portrayal, Diaz composes a stark vision of the brutality at the heart of European conquest and a haunting elegy for a lost precolonial past.
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Lav Diaz Interview
Meet Lav Diaz, the iconoclastic Filipino filmmaker whose monumental MAGELLAN imagines the life of the titular explorer from a bracing anticolonial perspective. In the following interview, Diaz recounts his early marathon trips to the movies with his cinema-obsessed father, the influence of Russia...
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MAGELLAN Trailer
COMING TO THE CRITERION CHANNEL ON APRIL 14 AT 8 P.M. ET
Directed by Lav Diaz • 2025 • Philippines, Spain, Portugal
Starring Gael García Bernal, Ângela Azevedo, Amado Arjay BabonA hypnotic journey engraved in images of staggering beauty and horror, this monumental achievement from Lav Diaz bol...
