Lav Diaz is developing a film about false prophets and a screen adaptation of José Rizal’s “Noli Me Tangere,” the Filipino auteur reveals, alongside details on “Let Us Through, Dear Ancestors” (“Makikiraan Po”), his Spanish colonization drama premiering in the Venice Open section of the Venice Film Festival.
Diaz tells Variety, “Right now, I’m working on a film that discourses on false ideologies and false prophets.” He is also developing a separate project drawing on the writing of “Noli Me Tangere,” the Rizal novel credited with helping inspire the Philippine Revolution of 1896.
Diaz shared those plans alongside a discussion of “Let Us Through, Dear Ancestors,” which marks a return to Venice for the director. He won the festival’s Golden Lion in 2016 for “The Woman Who Left.” He arrives with the film following “Magellan,” which stars Gael Garcia Bernal as the Portuguese explorer and premiered at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival.
“Let Us Through, Dear Ancestors,” for which Variety is unveiling a trailer, marks Diaz’s third excursion into a specific historical epoch, following “A Lullaby to the Sorrowful Mystery,” anchored in the Philippine Revolution of 1896. This time, Diaz reaches further back, to the late 16th century and early 17th century, when Spanish forces under Miguel Lopez de Legazpi consolidated colonial rule after Legazpi’s 1565 arrival in Cebu, 44 years after Magellan first landed in the archipelago. Chieftain Rajah Tupas resisted the Spanish for nearly a month before Legazpi bombarded local villages, forcing Tupas into a settlement.
