Clocking in at a mere 151 minutes, Lav Diaz’s latest opus “Makikiraan Po (Let Us Through, Dear Ancestors)” is his shortest feature in 24 years — no sweat for hardcore fans of the Filipino auteur’s durational cinema. It’s likely to interest his eager detractors, given its relative digestibility. More modestly scaled than last year’s “Magellan,” Diaz’s swift return to his signature noirish image-making is, like his last film, a story of colonial conquest realized through religious conversion. That’s always great fodder for a filmmaker with a long-term, unbridled relationship with history, what we might as well describe as “Diazian.” Since his nine-hour epic “Death in the Land of Encantos” in 2007, this is the Golden Lion-winning director’s ninth film at the Venice Film Festival, which should have scored a competition berth for its sheer vision alone.
Originally considered a mere flashback in a planned diptych, the languid and politically unflinching picture is in constant dialogue with the Gael García Bernal-starrer seafaring (mis)adventure, as the characters here are also thrust into setting the foundations of the empire and its grand narratives. As it partially did in “Magellan,” the municipality of Sampaloc in Quezon plays host to Diaz’s atypical road movie, which finds mestizo Dungwen (Christian Bables, in his first Diaz film) tasked with delivering a shipment of marble slabs for the construction of a Spanish church in an early 17th-century Philippine colonial town by the forest called “Estacion Nueve.” Upon completion of the task, Dungwen and his band of men — including so-called indios, headstrong Mang Tugis (Bong Cabrera, excellent among all male performers), scheming Higante (Rafa Siguion-Reyna), and anxious Diego (Amado Arjay Babon) — are promised a hefty sum and a vast tract of land.
During this epoch of endless construction and conversion, the Philippines is subjected to the horrors of Spain’s encomienda system, an exploitative labor structure implemented by conquistador Miguel López de Legazpi after recapturing Cebu in 1565. Diaz’s striking opening image shows an old indigenous man calling to the great spirits of this once-pristine Malay world, as if to warn them of imminent danger. Estacion Nueve, where serf labor and carnage punctuate the natives’ daily existence, is ruled by the cruel Spanish friar and encomendero Padre Enciso (Bart Guingona), who has raped many of the archipelago’s women and thereafter sired many children, including the rebellious Dungwen himself.
“They’re here for the taking, you know,” says the friar of the women he regularly defiles. “They’re practically begging for it.” Meanwhile, British-Spanish architect Alejo Smith (Daniel Palisa) claims he’s on the coveted island merely to build churches and fortresses. And yet, Diaz makes it clear from the jump that these indigenous peoples, deemed savages in need of taming, never asked the white colonialists anything at all.
As with many a Diaz movie, “Makikiraan Po” features multiple characters and plot points, including that of “Moonglow” director Isabel Sandoval as Babayeng Indimatandog, meaning “untouchable woman,” the goddess of hope and animist healer believed to bring bad luck once touched. The role, reworked from what was originally a bit part and conceived after the two filmmakers chanced upon each other at last year’s New York Film Festival, marks Sandoval’s first appearance in a Diaz project. It also doubles as preparation for the similar babaylan character the actor/director wrote for her forthcoming period film “Tropical Gothic.”
Babayeng Indimatandog, with her spying, protective brother Himamat (Ronnie Lazaro) in tow, seems to be the only woman in the colony evoking a real sense of agency. But that will be of little value to the raping, often-inebriated Padre Enciso, who accuses her of doing the devil’s work and will soon have her arrested and incarcerated. In this way, Diaz positions the babaylan as a figure of spiritual defiance, starkly contrasting the colonizer’s theocratic absolutism.
Sandoval trades her enigmatic, wistful élan in “Moonglow,” one of the year’s absolute best, for a more pensive, wearier presence, making the most of her character’s doomed plight, even as her facial features rarely dominate the frame given Diaz’s devotion to arranging his actors off-center and deep in the background. Likewise, it’s refreshing to hear Sandoval speaking her native tongue, Cebuano, which she hasn’t done since 2019’s “Lingua Franca,” her breakout success.
The use of chiaroscuro, aided by the film’s mostly daylight shooting, lends “Makikiraan Po” an air of mysticism and foreboding. Despite the lack of color, Diaz crafts some painterly vistas through an inspired mix of low and high-angle shots. He even packs some real surprises by resorting to jump cuts on more than one occasion. The production design is sparse, and there is a sense that what remained of the “Magellan” shoot’s Philippine leg — nipa huts and bamboo rafts, for instance — was repurposed for the new film. It seems like Diaz insists on filming in Sampaloc, now his adopted hometown, because he could never find better muck, richer vegetation, or stronger soundscape elsewhere.
The film is initially named after the character Dungwen, but the pivot to its current title, which gives Diaz’s work a metatextual layer, is a smart choice. It hints at the idea that “Makikiraan Po” — a common Filipino phrase uttered to show humility or respect for one’s space or the spirits of those who came before us — is about more than one tortured man’s plight. It’s fundamentally concerned with an enduring curse brought about by power-hungry white colonialists showing not an ounce of respect for the land they do not own and the people inhabiting it.
“Makikiraan Po” has other variations, such as the Tagalog “tabi-tabi po” and the Ilokano “bari-bari po.” Bari-bari is also the name of the ruffian marauder played by Yul Servo, who last appeared in Diaz’s nine-hour “Heremias: Book One – The Legend of the Lizard Princess” in 2006, though he’s better known for playing the lead in 2001’s “Batang West Side.” Diaz revealed in an interview that Servo played two characters in the original material they had shot. Mad and mercurial, Bari-bari is responsible for many lifeless bodies casually strewn across the sullied landscape, as he revels in ambushing men journeying through the thickets. And while it’s easy to conclude that he’s motivated by deep-seated avarice, Diaz gestures toward something more sinister: Bari-bari strikes a deal with Padre Enciso to kill Dungwen’s crew while leaving the priest’s son unscathed. Thus, Padre Enciso’s suspicions of the townspeople’s conniving ways when it comes to the precious marbles, which can be resold to a higher price to other parties building churches, are nothing but a hypocritical projection of his own gluttonous appetite.
While we see Bari-bari’s henchmen trailing Dungwen’s group through the forest, Diaz spares viewers from the actual bloodshed between them, forgoing the spectacle of violence and usual notions of cinematic momentum, as was the case in “Magellan.” Similarly, Diaz is uninterested in Padre Enciso’s promise of salvation, which aligns with the filmmaker’s aesthetic sensibility: He often makes the foreign intruder appear dwarfed in the frame, effectively rejecting any heroic pronouncement. Diaz fashions a mournful, vividly felt articulation of a world blighted by death and decay.
All the grief, disquiet, and helplessness eventually snap into focus, like a lost cub inching closer into the belly of the beast. Some suffer fatal ends, while others are left adrift. Though Diaz never shows its actual construction, we’re acutely aware that the Spanish church will be erected in the end, and that it will stand the test of time, like a cruel parting gift for the surviving kin of those whose lives were brutally taken in the process. Its deified grandeur and impressive high ceilings, more than anything, will serve as reminders of the country’s enduringly colonial, feudal, and capitalist spirit — apropos for Diaz’s longstanding commitment to retelling and challenging the Filipino origin story.
Grade: B+
“Makikiraan Po (Let Us Through, Dear Ancestors)” premiered at the 2026 Venice Film Festival. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution.
