Genus Pan(HKAFF 2020)

Philippine auteur Lav Diaz eschews politics to delve into man’s animalistic nature in his latest opus. After completing their duty at the end of gold mining season, three laborers make their way home on Hugaw island. While the three men trek through dense jungles, their friendship begins to crumble over paranoia and conversations about crimes that they committed long ago. Despite being his shortest film since 2011’s Elegy to the Visitor from the Revolution, Diaz’s latest black-and-white drama is a bleak and richly realized thesis on the impracticality of empathy and kindness in a dog-eat-dog world where only the strong survive.