The Woman Who Left

Synopsis

“Lav Diaz’s “The Woman Who Left” is a vast, dark behemoth of mystery and anguish, as forbidding as a starless night sky. This is the film that won Diaz the Golden Lion at this year’s Venice film festival and took the Filipino director’s global reputation to a new level. Running as it does at a mere three-and-three-quarter hours, it is a squib compared to his other works, such as the  eight-hour “A Lullaby to the Sorrowful Mystery”, which he premiered at Berlin in February. (…) Diaz here returns to the inspirations of classic Russian literature – guilt, shame, the burden of forgiveness, the existence of God, the search for Christian grace. His “Norte, the End of History” was freely adapted from Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment”. “The Woman Who Left” is inspired by (rather than strictly adapted from) Tolstoy’s short story “God Sees the Truth”. (Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian)

Around The World in 14 Films 2016, presented by Franz Müller