Lav Diaz returns to the Cannes Film Festival with Magellan, a searing historical epic that strips away the myths surrounding one of colonial history’s most iconic figures. Presented in the Cannes Première section, the film offers a stark and meditative portrait of Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan—not as a visionary hero, but as a man consumed by ambition, delusion, and spiritual decay.
As described by Festival de Cannes writer Benoit Pava, the film is “a meditation on power, conquest, and the illusions of the myth of civilization.” Shot in Diaz’s signature static, unhurried style and developed over seven years, Magellan focuses on the explorer’s final months leading to his death in the Philippines in 1521. Gael García Bernal takes on the title role in what critics are calling one of his most haunting performances.
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Though shorter than many of Diaz’s past works—clocking in at almost three hours—Magellan remains emotionally weighty and formally rigorous. According to IndieWire’s Josh Slater-Williams, the film was originally conceived as a nine-hour epic titled Beatriz, The Wife, with a stronger focus on Magellan’s second wife, Beatriz (played by Ângela Azevedo). While this version gives more space to Magellan’s perspective, Slater-Williams notes that Diaz “deconstructs the myth-making” around him, showing how violence, conquest, and religious zeal shaped the so-called glory of Western exploration.
Critics agree that this is far from a celebratory biopic. In his 4.5-star review for the South China Morning Post, Clarence Tsui calls the film “relentlessly engrossing” and praises its subversive take on the explorer’s legacy. Magellan is shown as a rigid, slave-owning colonizer, unwilling to question his mission and increasingly isolated by his obsession with conquest. Diaz also reframes the native resistance to Magellan’s arrival—not simply as a triumph over colonialism, but as a politically driven move by indigenous leaders who manipulate him for their own ends.
As Diaz often does, the film avoids graphic depictions of violence, yet it makes the aftermath unavoidable. Slater-Williams highlights how long, unbroken takes are used to capture landscapes strewn with corpses, forcing viewers to sit with the consequences of imperial ambition. Dialogues unfold amid scenes of devastation, where soldiers step around dead bodies with casual disregard, underscoring the dehumanization at the heart of colonial enterprise.
Visually, the film is carefully composed by cinematographer Artur Tort, a longtime collaborator of Spanish auteur Albert Serra, who also produced the film. Interiors glow with dim light, ship hulls and dense forests become claustrophobic spaces of tension and dread, and the restrained visual palette reflects the film’s somber tone.
“Magellan is no hero—he is a man facing his own oblivion,” Diaz told Festival de Cannes. That quote encapsulates the film’s core message. Far from the Western textbook narrative of a courageous voyager, this Magellan is depicted as a symbol of destructive ambition and colonial blindness.
With Magellan, Lav Diaz continues his mission to interrogate historical memory and give voice to the overlooked. The film is a compelling reminder that revisiting the past is not just about facts—but about the power to shape how stories are remembered and retold.
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