Review | Magellan, conqueror of Philippines, as we’ve never seen him before

Review | Magellan, conqueror of Philippines, as we’ve never seen him before

Filipino filmmaker Lav Diaz’s epic, visually stunning film presents its subject not as a daring explorer but as desperate and despotic.

Cannes Review: Lav Diaz’s Magellan is a Hypnotic, Unambiguous Exploration of the Horrors of Colonization

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. Born out of a long-in-the-works project focused on Magellan’s wife Beatriz, Magellan now functions as an unusual companion-of-sorts: a work you couldn’t mistake for that of any other filmmaker, but one that feels incomplete by definition,…