The Woman Who Left

Films by Lav Diaz (including Florentina Hubaldo, CTE, 12th New Horizons; A Lullaby to the Sorrowful Mystery, 16th New Horizons), one of the leading lights of Asian cinema, have long been an essential part of the New Horizons program. The main character in his latest work is Horacia, a woman who was unjustly thrown in jail for 30 years. Just as her sentence comes to an end, she finds out who actually committed the crime she was convicted of. Over the course of three decades, the world has changed for the worse, but Horacia, with stoic calm, devises a plan of vengeance against her former lover. Diaz places his protagonist in the wild and unknown world of the Philippines in late 1990s, where relentless violence and kidnappings were a regular part of everyday life. Brutal reality forces Horacia and many like her to wear a mask and to pretend to be someone else. The director continually forces his characters to analyze their moral values and to take part in a never-ending struggle for their own soul. Diaz's latest film won a Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival.