Magellan (film)


Magellan is a 2025 epic historical drama film directed by Lav Diaz. It is his first film shot in a language other than Tagalog. The film stars Gael García Bernal as Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan and depicts his role in Portuguese and Spanish colonial campaigns in Southeast Asia in the early 16th century.
The film had its world premiere at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival on 18 May, 2025. It was theatrically released in the Philippines by TEN17P on 10 September, and was selected as the Philippines' entry to the 98th Academy Awards for Best International Feature Film. Magellan received positive reception for its slow cinema cinematography and was critiqued for its portrayal of Lapulapu as a fictional entity.

Plot

In 1511, Ferdinand Magellan participates in the Capture of Malacca under the command of Afonso de Albuquerque and is injured in battle. He buys a Cebuano slave whom he names Enrique and brings him back to Portugal. Magellan is nursed back to health by Beatriz Barbosa, whom he marries, and Enrique secretly continues to worship his native gods. When King Manuel I of Portugal rejects Magellan's proposal to circumnavigate the globe to find a trade route that avoid Spanish competitors, Magellan goes to Spain instead, where his proposal is accepted. In 1519, he embarks on his expedition, leaving a pregnant Beatriz behind in Portugal.
Magellan faces multiple challenges during his voyage. He executes a crew member for engaging in homosexual acts and abandons another member and a priest in Patagonia for mutiny. Subsequent mutinies result in the loss of several ships and brutal punishments. The prolonged voyage in the Pacific Ocean severely weakens the crew. Magellan dreams of Beatriz informing him of the deaths of their child and herself.
Enrique spots the island of Cebu, lifting the crew's hopes. Going ashore, they are met by the local chieftain, Rajah Humabon, with Enrique acting as a translator. Magellan presents a statuette of the Santo Niño and a gift of quince to Humabon's sick son. When the boy recovers, Humabon's wife attributes the healing to the Santo Niño, leading to celebrations in the community. Magellan and Humabon enter into a blood compact and he convinces Humabon and his subjects to convert to Christianity. Within days, Magellan and his crew burn images of the anitos and provokes resistance by the natives. Humabon's wife, baptized as Juana, warns that they will face retribution from their gods.
Humabon instructs his men to spread rumors of the existence of Datu Lapu-Lapu, a wak-wak who preys on humans. Magellan, who dismisses Lapu-Lapu as a phantasm, is lured to fight the creature after learning that it and its subjects are defying him. In the resulting battle, Magellan and his forces are wiped out. Enrique watches Humabon and his subjects carry the corpse of one of Magellan's crew members and his detached head in celebration, and he reveals in a voice-over that Humabon orchestrated the attack, that Lapu-Lapu did not exist, and that he himself participated in killing most of Magellan's remaining men to regain his freedom.

Cast

Production

Development

Director Lav Diaz conceptualized the film with production company Rosa Filmes under the working title Magellan, which would portray a group of Filipinos who travel to Portugal to trace Magellan's origins in Portugal. The film aimed to "reverse the look between the coloniser and the empire". First announced in 2019 as Beatrice, The Wife, Diaz was inspired by the life of Magellan's wife Beatriz Barbosa de Magallanes, whom he married just two years before he set off for the Magellan expedition. Diaz wrote on the film with a focus on Beatriz, as Diaz found that the dearth of text written about her allowed creative liberties. During his research, he realized that Lapulapu may have been fictional as information on Lapulapu from primary sources was not clear and shifted the film's focus on that aspect. The film's production team travelled to Seville and Lisbon to study archival materials and scout for filming locations.
Diaz stated that his seven years of research into historical sources led him to portray Lapulapu, the datu of Mactan, as a "myth" rather than a historical figure. He argued that Lapulapu may have been created by Rajah Humabon to discourage Magellan's crew from converting more people into Christianity, remarking that "no one ever saw Lapulapu." Because of Lapulapu's widespread and official recognition as a historical figure in the Philippines, Diaz acknowledged that his interpretation might be criticized as "revisionist".
Gael Garcia Bernal, who portrays Magellan, learned of the project from Joaquim Sapinho on a phone call, and met producers Sapinho and Albert Serra in Berlin to discuss his role, and eventually with Diaz in Lisbon. Gael, who speaks Spanish, learned to speak Portuguese to play Magellan. Hazel Orencio, who portrays Juana, learned to speak Cebuano for this film. Sanny Joaquin, a native speaker of the language and assistant director of the film, assisted her.

Filming

Principal photography took place in Sampaloc and Mauban towns in Quezon, Philippines, in November 2024, followed by filming in southern Portugal and Cádiz, Spain. Production in the Philippines wrapped in December. The replica of Ferdinand Magellan's Victoria, which was in Cádiz during filming, was also used. During filming, Diaz fell ill with tuberculosis.
Arthur Tort, producer Albert Serra's regular collaborator, was the director of photography alongside Diaz. The film was shot with multiple Panasonic Lumix GH7 digital cameras, in its square 4:3 aspect ratio, the same equipment used by Tort in Pacifiction and Afternoons of Solitude.
Filming concluded in early 2025, and post-production finished in time for the Cannes premiere. During post-production, the footage was divided into two feature films, with Magellan being the first, and a second film with a nine-hour cut entitled Beatriz The Wife, featuring Beatriz's side of the story.

Release

Magellan had its world premiere at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival on 18 May 2025. It was screened in the Cannes Premiere section, while the second film is still in post-production.
Before its world premiere, Nour Films acquired the distribution rights of the film in France. The North American distribution rights were acquired by Janus Films, announced after the festival. In the Philippines, Ten17P holds the distribution rights of the film in the country.
The film had its Australian premiere at the 72nd Sydney Film Festival. It premiered in North America at the Toronto International Film Festival, followed by the US premiere at the New York Film Festival under the Main Slate section. It premiered in Spain at the 70th Valladolid International Film Festival. In September 2025, it was announced that the film would have its UK premiere at the BFI London Film Festival.
It was released in the Philippines on 10 September 2025. The film was originally an entry at the 2025 Asean International Film Festival in Malaysia, where Diaz was honored with a lifetime achievement award, but was barred from screening due to certain nude scenes deemed contrary to Sharia law.
It was released in the United States on January 9, 2026.

Reception

Critical response

Reviewers generally praised Magellan as a slow cinema film. The Hollywood Reporter's Jordan Mintzer remarked that the film was "exquisitely crafted" and may be one of Diaz's most accessible works for its relatively short runtime, while emphasizing that its austere, meditative style still places it firmly within the director's body of work. Jonathan Romney of Screen International characterized it as a "sardonic, detached but compelling study," while Josh Slater-Williams of IndieWire similarly considered it as one of the director's "most fascinating achievements," calling it a "hypnotizing historical and spiritual epic" and praising its immersive qualities across decades of history, something he argued few such stories successfully achieve. Variety's Guy Lodge described the film as "stunningly mounted" and "politically rigorous," noting that it is comparatively short for Diaz, but still "no artistic compromise," with the spirit of slow cinema intact.
Other critics emphasized Magellan's visual style and scope, with particular praise for the cinematography of Tort and Diaz. The cinematography uses a tableau vivant style and chiaroscuro, which the New York Times's Manohla Dargis compares with Renaissance art. The film is also composed of "muted colors", in contrast to Diaz's prior black and white films. Several reviewers commented on the use of mundane imagery to emphasize the violence present in the film, such as a tableaux of slaughtered bodies immediately following an introductory sequence set in a "picturesque" rainforest. The cinematography prefers to depict violence only to its aftermath, which The New Yorker's Justin Chang argues it decolonizes the viewer's gaze by removing the "visceral excitement" presented in violence. Dargis also asserted that the camera's minimal movements and square framing, which "tightly focuses the viewer's gaze", also yield a strong impact when the camera moves. Moreover, the aspect ratio brings the viewers "in observation rather than spectacle" for ABS-CBN's Ralph Revelar Sarza, Clarence Tsui of the South China Morning Post considered the film's stationary shots to reflect Magellan's megalomania. The film's lack of music and melodrama presents slow cinema at its "most viscerally rigorous and patient", according to a Los Angeles Times review.
Several critics also commended the cast's performances, particularly of Gael and Babon. For Romney, Garcia Bernal's "muted performance vividly evokes the physical and mental wear and tear on a voyager's being." In a more critical review, Daily Tribune's Stephanie Mayo describes Magellan as "costume-driven and staged" by citing anticipable and sparse dialogue, exaggerated expressions, and cinematography that "prevents audience engagement" throughout the film. After a comment on the film's limited dialogue, The Philippine Star's Le Baltar considers that the film refuses to be expository and exhaustive. Various critics regard Magellan as a story of imperialism, a tale on mutually-assured destruction, or a discussion on the violence an invaded "must stoop to themselves" for freedom.
The film received an honorable mention in The New Yorker magazine's Best Films of 2025 list.

Historical accuracy

The portrayal of Mactan chieftain Lapulapu as a "myth" drew mixed reactions from historians.
In an article published on The Freeman, two unnamed Cebu-based historians strongly disputed Diaz's claim and insisted that Lapulapu's existence is attested by Enrique of Malacca and Antonio Pigafetta, and that Pigafetta's account is a highly reliable source as he witnessed the Battle of Mactan first-hand. Other historians, including one cited by The Freeman, acknowledged the "artistic license" taken by Lav Diaz. At an invitational screening, Ambeth Ocampo noted that Diaz had made a film, not a "doctoral dissertation", and criticized the anonymous historians in The Freeman article for commenting on a film they had not seen. University of San Carlos associate professor George Borrinaga, in the same The Freeman article, acknowledged the film as a means to promote discussions on Lapulapu and how the lack of primary sources outside of Pigafetta led Diaz to be convinced that Lapulapu is a "myth", advising the viewers to take the claim with a "grain of salt".
In Ocampo's review published on the Philippine Daily Inquirer, he noted "minor" inaccuracies, such as how the historical Santo Niño image depicted in the film was actually naked and white-skinned, while blood compact ceremonies were conducted using blood drawn from under the breast, rather than from the arms as depicted in the film.
Diaz himself already anticipated criticisms of "historical revisionism". He argued that Filipinos should reconsider Rajah Humabon's place in Philippine history, and his portrayal of events of the film is the result of his own research.
The use of the Cebuano language in Magellan was described by some as overly modern. The Asian Cut's Paul Enicola wrote in his Toronto International Film Festival review, "More contentious is the use of Cebuano here, which occasionally veers into modern registers that jar against the historical setting." He added that as a fluent Cebuano speaker, he found it distracting, though not a significant issue in his viewing experience. An article by &Asian quoted a few Cebuano-speaking moviegoers who said that the film's language was rather "anachronistic" due to its "minimal" borrowings from Hiligaynon and Tagalog.