“President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs was the big story in the Philippines and it was one of the biggest stories in the world, and cinema must bear witness. The bloody extra-judicial killings became normal after a while as people got inured to them.”

Lav Diaz, the internationally respected Filipino auteur, shared those words to explain why he chose to write and direct a film, When the Waves Are Gone (Kapag Wala Na Ang Mga Alon), about the bloody war on drugs triggered by former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte (his six-year term ended in June).

 

The Philippines’ most prolific and active indie filmmaker, whose The Woman Who Left (Ang Babaeng Humayo) won the Golden Lion for best film at the 2016 Venice Film Festival, returns to La Biennale with When the Waves Are Gone, this time in the out of competition category.

Venice honored Diaz with four other awards in the Horizons (Orizzonti) sidebar: a special mention in 2007 for Kagadanan sa banwaan ning mga engkanto, an award for best film in 2008, for Melancholia; and for best director in 2020, for Lahi, hayop.

When the Waves Are Gone’s synopsis gives a background on the film’s story: “The moment Duterte sat as the new president of the Philippines in 2016, his biggest act was launching his so-called war against drugs, shocking the world for its brutality and the ensuing human rights abuses. Extra-judicial killings have become rampant and most of the crimes are connected to the police.”

Diaz, filming again in black and white, worked mostly in the town of Sorsogon, located in the southernmost province on Luzon island. He had shot in Taal, a town in Batangas province, and Lisbon, Portugal, but decided to concentrate on footage filmed in Sorsogon.

The two ways the deadly drug war impacted the men involved are embodied by characters played by John Lloyd Cruz and Ronnie Lazaro. At three hours and seven minutes, When the Waves are Gone is one of the shortest films completed by the renowned author. Many of his films run over five hours.

 

We caught up with Diaz in an interview via email before he flew to Italy to attend his film screenings at the festival on the Lido.

How does it feel to return to the Venice Film Festival, this time with an out-of-competition category? What are you looking forward to?

It always feels great to be in Venice. I consider it home. They really have a great program this year. The main competition is going for the feminist mode/route and the usual Hollywood bias, which is understandable.

The out-of-competition and Orizzonti sections have far better and greater line-ups. I can only stay four days there so I’ll check on some old friends, watch a few films, and visit my favorite hidden wild blackberry area there. I need to see if my beloved berry shrubs are still generously bearing sweet nurturing fruits and are not suffocating from severe climate anxiety.

You have won four awards from Venice but winning the Golden Lion for The Woman Who Left, in 2016, must have been a special moment. What do you still remember the most when you won the Golden Lion?

I didn’t make the film for the award or any other awards, so, there were no expectations. We were already happy it was in the main competition. Still, winning was a bit of a shock.

But, yes, of course, a Golden Lion for the Philippines, finally! The highest award for a Filipino film yet. But just the same, wala namang pakialam sa atin (they don’t care much in our country). Also, there is that lingering and insidious mentality that we cannot win such an award, which is prevalent among those who still believe in the dominant eye of the West.

When we got it, there was that mode of disbelief. It was palpable in so many quarters. Some film enthusiasts and a few friends celebrated the win, of course. It was funny – after the award, we went back home, quietly, and it was really quiet in the country.

Then I went straight to Madrid, for my retrospective there. Many critics and film scholars were really ecstatic and noisy: “So you’re the new king of your country! It’s huge for your country and your country’s cinema. How’s the celebration, how’s the parade? It will surely go straight for an Oscar run, which is a tradition for all Venice winners!”

I said, “I’m still the same, the street bum. There was no celebration, no parades. It was deafeningly quiet there. In fact, I’m no superstar boxer, and I definitely didn’t win the Miss Universe contest. And, as expected, owing to the twisted perspective of some Philippine Film Academy people, another film was sent to the Oscars.

“And it’s not a problem because the Oscars is an American thing, anyway. We’re okay with it. We’re preparing the next film. We’ll not stop doing better and greater cinema for our people. Life goes on. That’s the reality in our sad Republic of the Philippines.”

The reactions were, of course, a thousand “What? Why?” And “Oh, no!”

And what do you still remember about Sam Mendes, who was jury president that year?

It was a good jury. Besides Sam Mendes, there were Laurie Anderson, Joshua Oppenheimer, Giancarlo de Cataldo, and Zhao Wei (the main jury included Gemma Arterton, Nina Hoss, Chiara Mastroianni, and Lorenzo Vigas). In his brief speech at the start of the awards, if memory serves me right, Mr. Mendes made a critique on the practice of distributing the awards – which is a prevalent practice in festivals.

Mr. Oppenheimer told us, during the dinner celebration, that it didn’t take them a minute to decide which film would get the Lion. He said, “After the jury members watched The Woman Who Left, we looked at each other and we knew.”

During the press conference for the winners, on my left were the guys from Russia, and on my right were the bigwigs from Hollywood. Of course, they didn’t even look at me or say hello. To them, the Lion winner didn’t exist because the director is from a small archipelago called the Philippines.

When one journalist said “Your black and whites in the film are great! What camera did you use?”, I answered, “Oh, just a small and cheap camera called Sony A7SII.” You can actually feel the disdain from those on the table who, of course, used mammoth Panavisions and Arriflexes.

What motivated you to write and direct a film about then Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs? Was there a specific moment, photo, news story, that made you decide to tackle that issue?

President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs was the big story in the Philippines and it was one of the biggest stories in the world, and cinema must bear witness. The bloody extra-judicial killings became normal after a while as people got inured to them.

The people became desensitized to the horrors of the government’s campaign but cinema and other media cannot and mustn’t be a party to the silence.

Photojournalist Raffy Lerma’s photo, headlining the July 23, 2016 edition of the Philippine Daily Inquirer – an image which became known as “Pieta” – was a big inspiration for the film. It made the rounds of the biggest newspapers and news bureaus in the world. It became the symbol of the crimes as it hastened awareness. Lerma said, in one interview, “Thirty deaths in one night is not normal.”

How much direction did you give to Ronnie Lazaro? What were your specific instructions about the character he plays?

Ronnie Lazaro is a very intelligent actor. Everything was there in the script that I was writing every day during the shoot. Oftentimes, direction for him would only be instructional, e.g., where to move, what to do, how to deliver the tones of some lines and words, cadences, and syllabic approaches to delivery. He knows my process, too, because he is a dear old friend.

We had worked together in Hubad sa Ilalim ng Buwan (Naked Under the Moon), Heremias Books I & II, Ebolusyon ng Isang Pamilyang Pilipino (Evolution of a Filipino Family), Hesus Robolusyunaryo (Hesus, The Revolutionary), and Hele sa Hiwagang Hapis (Lullaby to a Sorrowful Mystery).

Ronnie has an active and emphatic approach to his characters. He is tireless. He will just keep working on them. He will add physical nuances. And, likewise, there’ll be an endless dissection of the inner and unseen aspects. It’s really great working with him.

You have worked many times with John Lloyd. Do you already have a shorthand with him?

No. Again, the great thing about working with great actors is that you keep discovering things. You think you know them already, their processes, methodologies, even their idiosyncrasies. But, no. In fact, you don’t know them. You don’t know anything.

Even this medium called cinema, I still don’t really know it. Life remains a mystery. And this mystery nurtures the muses of creations. It’s always humbling to realize that we don’t know anything.

Without giving things away, you have filmed two great actors, John Lloyd and Ronnie, dancing quite lengthily in separate scenes. As the director, you got the best seat while watching them dance. What was that like?

The provenance of the dancing in the film was both quite funny and terrifying. Well, at least when I was still in those moments. Two months before we shot the Sorsogon scenes – which, ultimately, became the film; we excluded the Lisbon and Taal scenes – I went ahead there, alone, looking for locations. This was from November 2020 till early January 2021, during the height of the pandemic.

My routine would be: early walks by the shore and, then, I’d go inland till nighttime, traversing lonely roads, deep ravines, rushing rivers, forgotten villages, and moribund forests. Oftentimes, those were endless and aimless walks. I didn’t really know where I was going and what I was going to find. Sometimes I questioned my being there.

Despite strict COVID protocols, the inhabitants of Sorsogon were relaxed. There was a perceptible fatalistic attitude in the way they deal with mortality.

What caught my eye was the Zumba mania. There were Zumba dance groups, Zumba exercise groups, Zumba platoons, and Zumba couples everywhere. At first I found it funny. Then, I became terrified by the fact that they were (Covid) spreaders. Then, eventually, I saw it as some form of a natural protest against confinement and restriction, albeit they were not really aware of it.

Subliminally, the visual cortex of my brain became fixated on these physical movements. So, when I was creating the characters of John Lloyd and Ronnie, the Zumba influence was inherently there. I asked them to dance but I asked them to make it more primal, sans the aid and guidance of beat and music; it must be a movement from their inner beings. They must dig it from their ancient souls.

Has Raffy Lerma, whose “Pieta” photo inspired the film, seen When the Waves Are Gone? If yes, what was your discussion like after he watched the film? What was his reaction? If not yet, what do you look forward to about showing the film to him?

Raffy Lerma’s lens and words, his continuing chronicles, have done so much already in the fight to find justice for the extra-judicial killing victims during the six years of Duterte. Yet, he remains the shiest and humblest person I know.

I asked him to be in the film. He said he couldn’t do it. But he wholeheartedly gave me the photographs, his thoughts, his unconditional support. He just said, “I know what you’ve been doing, Lav. I trust you.” He hasn’t seen the film yet.

Talk about filming in Sorsogon which looks stunning in this film. Which scenes were shot in Lisbon?

As I said, the Lisbon and Taal shoots were excluded from the film. Sorsogon is one of the most beautiful places in the Bicol region of Luzon island. The people are simple, fun-loving, beautiful. They still have that archaic ordinariness, an attribute that’s so rare nowadays in the age of cell phones, the internet, dumb dance music, and lies.

Correct me if I am wrong – did behind-the-camera Portuguese talents work on the film? How did that collaboration come about?

Grants from Europe demand a form of collaboration they often call co-production; simply, part of the budget must be spent there. So, we shot some scenes in Lisbon, did our film grading there, and then, the sound design and engineering were done in Paris.

Portuguese collaborators worked with us in the Lisbon shoot and film grading, and French sound engineers helped during the sound post in Paris. The Sorsogon and the Taal shoots were the hard work of my small crew, headed by Hazel Orencio.

What do you hope the audience in Venice will feel or think when they watch When the Waves Are Gone?

I want them to know that crimes against humanity were committed by the Duterte regime. And justice must be served. And that cinema can still be a medium for the truth, and not just for nauseating vanity and the evil big profit. And that, in greater cinema, we can still find poetry and philosophical truths.