Review: Gael García Bernal Slowly Becomes a Covetous Conquerer in 'Magellan'

Review: Gael García Bernal slowly becomes a covetous conquerer in 'Magellan'

Director Lav Diaz presents an epic, granular depiction of transoceanic travel and colonialist misadventure in an absorbing movie rooted in restlessness.

‘Magellan’ Review: Gael García Bernal and Lav Diaz Unite for a Hypnotizing Historical and Spiritual Epic

Editor’s Note: This review was originally published during the 2025 Cannes Film Festival. Janus Films opens “Magellan” in select theaters starting Friday, January 9, 2026. Despite our best efforts to go into a film completely blind, sometimes we’ll catch online chatter or a snippet of a promotional interview that inevitably colors something about our first viewing of an anticipated movie. It could be gossip about stars not getting along that mig…

Magellan — Lav Diaz [Review]

To the avid film festival observer, the gargantuan, Odyssean works of Filipino director Lav Diaz competing or winning an award is something of a staple. With the Cannes Film Festival, the filmmaker’s relationship differs in frequency and seeming stature. Norte, the End of History (2013) and The Halt (2019) premiered in the Un Certain Regard [...] The post Magellan — Lav Diaz [Review] appeared first on In Review Online.

Lav Diaz on Magellan: “Cinema Can Look Big Even with a Small Camera”

Filipino writer, director, editor, production designer, and cinematographer Lav Diaz is over 25 features deep into a three-decade-long career, and he continues to one-up himself. With Magellan––a biopic that couldn’t be less biopic, and one of the year’s greatest surprises––he enters new territory once again, this time working outside of the microbudget Filipino system he’d fashioned for himself, which has allowed him to crank through lengthy, m…