Let Us Through, Dear Ancestors — Lav Diaz [Venice ’26 Review]

In 2025, among the best films of the year, at least according this very outlet, was Lav Diaz’s Magellan. That work concluded along the waters of Cebu in 1521 AD, with the historical figure Enrique de Malaca — a Filipino enslaved to the titular Spanish-employed figure and circumnavigator — narrating his tacit betrayal of the colonists in a bid to secure his own freedom, a plausible but nevertheless historico-fictive conjecture that fits squarely within Diaz’s leftist, anti-imperialist paradigm. This is...