Philippine director Lav Diaz’s latest is another slow-cinema masterpiece, examining President Duterte’s reign of terror, fusing the supernatural and police procedural.
Hermes (John Lloyd Cruz) is a cop and proud of it, with little conscience about who he sends to prison and how he does it. But his years punishing evildoers–or people he’s been told are evildoers–are now taking their toll, both physically and spiritually. When one of the criminals Hermes has sent away–Primo Macabantay (Ronnie Lazaro), a religious fanatic with designs of revenge–is freed after 10 years, all hell breaks loose. At once a searing critique of the Philippines political situation and a bloody revenge film, When the Waves are Gone is like nothing you’ll see at this year’s festival. “[L]ike Dostoevsky, Jacobean tragedy and High Noon, in one brutal cocktail.” –Jonathan Romney, Screen International
Director Biography
Born in 1968 in Datu Paglas, Cotabato, Philippines, Lav Diaz has emerged as one of the great practitioners of the slow-cinema movement, whose work has appeared at festivals around the world, including Cannes. His works include Norte, the End of History (2013) and The Woman Who Left (2016), both of which appeared at MSPIFF.