Venice International Film Festival 2024, Busan International Film Festival 2024
Hilarion Zabala, a former master sergeant, is tormented by a strange smell. The diagnosis is phantosmia, i.e. olfactory hallucinations, where he perceives smells that do not actually exist. His doctor attributes this to past trauma and recommends that he confront and recall his dark military service period as a solution. Zabala, willing to take on any task, voluntarily visits a military base and is eventually assigned to a remote island penal colony. However, another horrific reality awaits him there.
Lav Diaz was born in Mindanao, Philippines, in 1958. He primarily focuses on social and political struggles in the Philippines. He has received many awards at prestigious film festivals, including the Golden Leopard at the Locarno Film Festival for From What Is Before (2014), the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival for The Woman Who Left (2016), and the Silver Bear at the Berlinale for A Lullaby to the Sorrowful Mystery (2016). His other films include Melancholia (2008), Prologue to the Great Desaparecido (2013), The Halt (2019), and Essential Truths of the Lake (2023).
Diversion