Lav Diaz, congratulations, your film “Mula sa kung ano ang noon” (“From what is before” in tagalog) won the Pardo d’oro.
It’s unbelievable ! Thank you Locarno, thank you Carlo, thank you so much, I am speechless about it.

Jean Renoir used to say that in order to reach out to the whole world, you have to talk about your own village.
This film is based on the memories from my own childhood, for the two years before the Martial Law was declared in the Philippines. It was the advent of the darkest period of our history, which was cataclysmic. Everything in the film comes from my memories, all the characters are real but then I just changed their names, of course.

Is this the victory of Slow Cinema over Fast Cinema?
Everything is Cinema for me, so I don’t want to label things.

At 338 minutes and in black & white, some critics said this is your most accessible film. Do you agree?
Maybe for some, maybe for a new audience. But of course it’s also for people that are used to my work .

Would you like to dedicate this award to anyone?
I want to dedicate this award to my father. He brought me Cinema, he’s a cinema addict, and he started this passion in me. For the filipino people, it’s for them, for their struggle, and then I would like to dedicate it to all serious filmmakers in the world, to Pedro Costa, he’s my brother and I love his work, to Matias Pineiro, and to the makers of all the other films in the competition (taken from the LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL site; view original article here)

Massimo Benvegnu is a film critic and film festival professional based in The Netherlands.