Golden Leopard-winning, 5-hour Lav Diaz epic to have special screening

Lav Diaz's five-hour "Mula sa Kung Ano Ang Noon," which won the Golden Leopard award at the recently concluded Locarno International Film Festival, will be screened in Metro Manila on September 21, according to the Film Development Council of the Philippines.

According to the FDCP, the venue for what it called the "Handog Sa Bansa" screening has not yet been confirmed. However, the screening will coincide with a seven-day theatrical run for the film.

The five-hour black-and-white film recounts the strange events that befall an isolated village in Marcos-era Philippines in 1972.

At a lunch hosted by the council last week, Diaz said he hoped local audiences will turn out to see the movie, "because it talks about, tells about what happened in the last two years before martial law. It’s based on real events. The characters are based on real characters in our village when I was in grade six up to first year high school. I reenacted everything from memory. But it’s about the coming, it’s a foreboding thing, it’s a horror film actually. We’re entering hell and we felt that then."

According to the FDCP, at Locarno the film also bagged the International Federation of Film Societies' (IFFS) Don Quixote Prize, the FIPRESCI International Critics Prize, the Environment is Quality of Life Prize—handed out by Locarno Festival Youth Jury—and the Boccalino de Oro Independent Critics Award for Best Actress for lead Hazel Orencio. — BM, GMA News