Philippine filmmaker Lav Diaz is developing a new film examining false prophets and false ideologies, as well as a screen adaptation of José Rizal’s acclaimed novel “Noli Me Tangere,” which helped spark the Philippine Revolution of 1896. Diaz also shared details about “Let Us Through, Dear Ancestors” (“Makikiraan Po”), his latest Spanish colonization drama set to premiere in the Venice Open section of the Venice Film Festival.
Telling Variety, Diaz said he is currently working on a project that explores false ideologies and figures. The filmmaker is also adapting Rizal’s novel, widely credited with inspiring Philippine independence movements, into a separate cinematic work.
Diaz announced these plans while reflecting on “Let Us Through, Dear Ancestors,” which marks his third appearance at the Venice Film Festival since winning the Golden Lion in 2016 for “The Woman Who Left.” The film follows “Magellan,” starring Gael Garcia Bernal as the Portuguese explorer, which debuted at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival.
Set in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, “Let Us Through, Dear Ancestors” reaches further back than Diaz’s previous historical works, including “A Lullaby to the Sorrowful Mystery,” which centered on the 1896 Philippine Revolution. The film depicts the arrival of Spanish forces under Miguel Lopez de Legazpi in Cebu in 1565, 44 years after Magellan first landed in the archipelago. Chieftain Rajah Tupas resisted the Spanish for nearly a month before being forced into a settlement following artillery bombardment of local villages.
“It is an essential part of my continuing studies and dissection of my people’s struggle, or simply trying to understand the history of the Philippines,” Diaz said.
The film focuses on the forced labor system used to construct the Philippines’ colonial-era churches — structures that Diaz argues are steeped in violence despite their current status as celebrated cultural and religious landmarks. Under Spanish rule, able-bodied Malay men from teenagers to adults were required to perform 40 days of unpaid annual labor on roads, bridges, churches, forts, piers, plantations, haciendas and mines. Based on historical accounts, Diaz estimated that roughly 30 percent of the male population perished under this system.
“Forgetful Filipinos must learn, must know, must understand, that these structures were built by forced labor, and that they didn’t appear in their midst by some cosmic manifestations — it’s blood, sweat, tears, and deaths of our ancestors,” Diaz said.
Expanding his critique to religion itself, Diaz stated, “Religion is one of the worst forms of violence.” He added that “faith can be a form of eternal subjugation, especially for the weak,” and cited the Crusades, the Holocaust and present-day conflicts in Gaza, Ukraine, Afghanistan and Darfur as evidence of faith’s continuing entanglement with violence.
The film’s Filipino title, “Makikiraan Po,” derives from a phrase still used by Filipino Malays when passing through areas believed to hold ancestral spirits. “I still do it, naturally, when I am entering a forest, a zone, when I am thinking of the unattainable,” Diaz said. “It is a connection, a relationship, with the ancient, with the primal, the pure.”
Diaz also traced the roots of the Philippines’ modern class structure to the encomienda system, which King Philip II ordered Legazpi to impose in 1571. Under this system, indigenous communities lost ownership of their land while paying heavy tributes and performing forced labor for Spanish encomenderos. “All the old rich families, landlords, hacienderos, political clans, big businesses, have their connection from the encomienda,” Diaz said.
Shot in black and white in Sampaloc, Quezon Province, the film marks Diaz’s fourth production in the town, following “Magellan,” “Phantosmia” and the upcoming “Kawalan.” Diaz credited the area with restoring his health after tuberculosis burst his left lung during the editing of “Magellan,” and again after he was later afflicted with severe asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
“The spirit of the place provides the best attributes I needed in my films on issues of truth, vision and transcendence,” he said.
Diaz cast filmmaker Isabel Sandoval alongside longtime collaborators Ronnie Lazaro and Yul Servo. Sandoval plays the Babaylan, a traditional Malay healer whom Diaz described as a lasting bridge between Filipinos and their pre-Hispanic, pre-Islamic Malay heritage. “She contributed majestic nuance in the whole vision of the Babaylan character, and I am truly grateful for her generosity,” he said.
At 151 minutes, “Let Us Through, Dear Ancestors” runs shorter than many of Diaz’s best-known films, though he said his process remained unchanged. “Nothing really changed with my praxis,” he said. “My principle has always been to work on the demands of the material at hand, to work around the conditions and situations. There’s never a fixed setup or framework. It’s just all hard work on the different aspects of the process really. The struggle to pursue a vision is the most important.”
“Cinema must have the responsibility to commit to the truth. There should be no compromise on that issue given the condition of the world right now. Cinema’s soul is the truth,” Diaz added.
“Let Us Through, Dear Ancestors” is produced by C’est Lovi Prods., Epicmedia Prods. and Sine Olivia Pilipinas, with Heretic handling world sales.
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