When asked what drives a man to search for the truth, Lieutenant Papauran says dejectedly that maybe he just wants to keep inflicting pain on himself. Faced with President Duterte’s bloody murders and brazen lies, he continues his struggle to solve a fifteen-year-old case around an ash-laden landscape and an impenetrable lake. It has become a cross he can barely carry but keeps dragging it anyway.
Born in 1958, he is considered the ideological father of the New Philippine Cinema. He works as director, writer, producer, editor, cinematographer, poet, composer, production designer and actor all at once. He is especially notable for the length of his work, his films not being governed by time but by space and nature. His work mostly deals with the social and political struggles of his motherland. Since 1998 he has directed about twenty films, and won numerous international awards including the Locarno Film Festival Pardo d’Oro with ‘From What Is Before’ (2014), the Berlinale Alfred Bauer Award with ‘A Lullaby to the Sorrowful Mystery’ (2016) and the Venice Golden Lion with ‘The Woman Who Left’ (2016). ‘Essential Truths of the Lake’ (2023) had its world premiere at the Locarno Film Festival.