Lav Diaz’s ‘Humayo’ in Italy

FROM left: Lav Diaz, Charo Santos and John Lloyd Cruz in Venice

Quick on the heels of winning the Golden Lion at the 73rd Venice International Film Festival last Sept. 10, Lav Diaz’s “Ang Babaeng Humayo” will soon be shown in Italian cinemas.

The nearly four-hour film was picked up by Microcinema for theatrical release in Italy in the next few months. Films Boutique, a firm based in Berlin, Germany, is the Filipino movie’s international sales agent.

The deal was reported by Variety, which called “Humayo” one of Diaz’s “more accessible” movies. Microcinema, on the other hand, praised

“Humayo” as a film “that thinks out of the box.”

Although releasing the Filipino film could be “challenging” due to its length, the Microcinema told Variety that several art-house exhibitors and metro-based cineplexes “have already expressed interest.”

It is the first time for a Diaz film to be shown in Italian theaters.

Meanwhile, Diaz told the Inquirer that his six-hour film, “Florentina Hubaldo, CTE,” was shown on RAI 3 last Sept. 16.

“Florentina” tells the story of a woman forced into prostitution by her father. In this film, the Italian website pointed out, Diaz meditates on “the origin of evil, violence and cruelty.”

Meanwhile, “Humayo” scored yet another rave review from a foreign critic—this time from Manohla Dargis of the New York Times.

Dargis hailed “Humayo” as a “wholly absorbing… opus” and lead actress Charo Santos as “great.”

Santos plays a wrongfully convicted schoolteacher who is torn between revenge and redemption upon her release after three decades in prison.

Dargis remarked: “The story opens and closes like an accordion, alternately bringing you into [the titular character’s] private reveries and thrusting you out into the larger, often alien milieu.” The reviewer asserted that “Humayo” is “Dickensian in scope… a great achievement from an exemplar of the art.” “Humayo” opens tomorrow in local cinemas.