AUSTRALIAN PREMIERE
“A statement against political repression and for artistic freedom … It’s a rebellion against [Filipino] historical amnesia and a middle finger to Hollywood and mainstream manners.” – Filmmaker
“If you forget the past, you can’t really move forward. The Philippines are like that. We don’t have a sense of history … I want to create a model that will, even in a very small way, help my culture.” – Lav Diaz
Winner of the Golden Leopard at Locarno, long-form master Lav Diaz’s From What is Before could be viewed as a spiritual prequel to Norte, the End of History. However it’s thematically closer to his earlier works that deal directly with Ferdinand Marcos’s era of martial law.
In a rural barrio in the early 1970s, a series of savage, unexplained events unfold: a cow is found hacked to death in a field, huts are burned to the ground and when the military arrive to intervene, life for the villagers descends into nightmare.
An angry, visually breathtaking cry of rage, From What Is Before is both universal and local: a historical memory and a contemporary warning. A search of lost time.
