By Paddy Mulholland

The slow death, the anguished stagger of a wounded labourer in Evolution of a Filipino Family (2004), the gradual, forced mental disintegration of a sex slave in Florentina Hubaldo, CTE (2012), is not in Lav Diaz’s latest, Genus, Pan. (2020). Noted as one of the Filipino filmmaker’s shortest features to date, it’s also one of his most direct, most confrontational, least overtly compassionate.