Inside 'Magellan,' the New Historical Epic You Need to Watch

At the last New York Film Festival, an edition featuring megawatt celebrities like Julia Roberts and star-studded films like Jay Kelly , it was heartening to see the slow cinema auteur Lav Diaz-far from a household name in America or even his native Philippines-inexplicably become one of its most memorable viral moments. Diaz was at the festival for the US premiere of Magellan , his hypnotic new historical epic starring arthouse icon Gael García Bernal as the eponymous colonialist, which had already drawn rapturous reviews at Cannes. The film follows the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan’s 16th-century Spanish expedition to find a westward route to the Spice Islands, ultimately leading to the first circumnavigation of the Earth and his death in the Philippines. In a Q&A that followed the screening, a chipper Diaz-bespectacled and sporting long grey hair at 67 years old-told the festival’s artistic director Dennis Lim through a translator that casting García Bernal was discussed by him and his producers while they were “all having sex in Europe.” The response, delivered with glee by Diaz, drew a stunned clarification from his translator, bashful smiles from Lim, and laughter from García Bernal. (“I wasn’t sure I heard right,” the translator remarked onstage. “Apparently, I did.”) The morning after, the moment was all over Film Twitter, drawing both encouragement and mild shock from film fans. “It was an after midnight screening, and I think we all woke up for this,” Gossip Girl reboot writer Eric Eidelstein posted . The moment also had the effect of introducing Diaz to a new audience of film fans. “There's those moments in theater that suddenly happen and you don't understand the reason behind it or what's happening really,” García Bernal tells me, laughing, in an interview ahead of the film’s January 9th US premiere. “ Did this happen ? Wow, really ? I mean, it's a fun theatrical moment.” Despite his brush with niche viral fame, Lav Diaz is not a new name to anyone paying close attention to global cinema in the last two years. A recipient of top distinctions at major festivals like Venice and Locarno, Lav Diaz is regarded as one of today’s most preeminent makers of slow cinema. Take it from Meryl Streep: After she watched Diaz’s eight-hour 2016 historical fantasy drama A Lullaby to the Sorrowful Mystery at the Berlin International Film Festival, where she was jury president, she said of Diaz , “This film. This guy. He changed the molecule system in my body.” (The jury eventually awarded it the festival’s Silver Bear Award.) And last year, when I interviewed Luca Guadagnino for GQ , the Call Me By Your Name director raved: “Lav Diaz is one of the great directors... When there is a movie by Lav Diaz coming out, that's an event and I'm there.” (The Italian filmmaker also called Diaz’s four-hour-long Phantosmia one of his favorite films of 2024 .) Even Diaz’s greatest champions will say that his films are typically long and incredibly slow. “There...

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