Of all the filmmakers who could possibly make headlines, Lav Diaz did at the New York Film Festival: The Filipino auteur of such long-cinema works “Norte, the End of History” and “The Woman Who Left” told the audience at Alice Tully Hall in fall 2025 that Gael García Bernal was cast as Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan during sex with producers Albert Serra and Joaquim Sapinho.
Though Diaz is a queer filmmaker, those comments were a joke that were taken too seriously by the Film Twitter public. The Filipino director, though, did consult with Serra and Sapinho to decide that beloved Mexican actor García Bernal was the best choice to play Magellan in what has turned out to be Diaz’s most accessible film — at least in terms of running time. Diaz is famous for four-hour-plus movies that languish in the psyches of their characters; his “Magellan,” in theaters now, features García Bernal as the famed explorer who has ruined the lives of indigenous people on the way to Spain.
Magellan and his crew end up in the Philippines, where much of the movie was shot on location, leaving various native lives in ruin while Magellan’s own in Portugal is left for dead, too: back there in his home state, he impregnated a woman and left her behind in 1519.
The endlessly charismatic Diaz, who spoke to IndieWire over Zoom out of the Criterion Closet in New York, brings his characteristic slow-paced style to his first-ever biopic. One that was made on his own terms, foregrounding Magellan’s potentially abusive past behavior and mistreatment of natives everywhere. The film, which premiered at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, was primarily shot in Diaz’s home country on location, with scenes shot in Portugal and Spain as well. The director, who has never been nominated for an Oscar and this year lost out on a nomination after “Magellan” did not make the shortlist, came down with an illness following production. But it’s only further emboldened him to continue telling long-form stories that refuse a conventional, commercial embrace.
“Magellan” is currenty in theaters from Janus Films nationwide, and IndieWire sat down with the filmmaker and star to talk about the movie.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity and length.
IndieWire: You almost died during the production of this movie, having contracted tuberculosis during its making. How did that influence the post-production?
Lav Diaz: I didn’t know that it was that severe when we were shooting in Portugal. I had this cough, it was coming and coming. I was self-medicating in Portugal and went to Spain, and then Manila, then after the shoot, I went straight to doing the rough cut. Then, on January 22, two days after the rough cut, I sent it to the guys in Lisbon and Paris. My body, I was relaxing, but still had this hard cough. The night of January 22, I went to take a bath, and then suddenly, blood was coming out of my nose. I was drowning. Two days later, they brought me to the hospital. It was tuberculosis. My left lung exploded. But I medicated for six months and I’m OK now. It was a sort of rebirth. Every time you create something, you’re losing a lot at the same time. There’s a lot of regeneration. You’re gaining something, you’re losing something. When “Magellan” came out, it’s kind of a rebirth as well.
Gael, in what ways did the movie take a toll on you?
Gael Garcia Bernal: Incarnating a character like this, involves a lot of jumps into an unknown abyss of a play, of a game, of a world that’s been created, and every day there is a risk. Every day there is something interesting that goes on, an adventure. Especially with Lav. He is always there with the surprises. Every day there is something new happening, something unexpected. It’s demanding. That energy is demanding, but it’s why we love doing this. If cinema became a systematic know-it-all type of thing, where everything has be thought of and perfect, then it would be quite boring.
In this case, there was a lot rain, for example. Every day, it was raining in the Philippines. It was that kind of thing that you have to find a way around it, but you use it at the end of the day. Limitations are the basis of creativity. We were always wet, yes. Uncomfortable, yes. But at the same time, it’s part of the movie. It’s not complicated on a big, grandiose [way], like, “We managed to survive it.” Everyone survived it.
It’s not like filming “Apocalypse Now,” then.
Garcia Bernal: There have always been these feats where the white man talks about surviving in the jungle, where there are millions of people living. There’s also that adventure that comes into play.
Gael, what was your reaction to playing a Portuguese character? You’re a Latin American actor, but it’s not like you haven’t played outside your bounds before: You were an Iranian in “Rosewater” and a Chilean in “No.” You have an ambiguity that lends to something like this movie, where there is the colonial relationship that, say, Mexico has to places like Spain and Portugal.
Garcia Bernal: I really like films that use the music of the language where they’re set, and I love exploring their waters. It is very interesting. Using another accent, for example, in Latin America in the Spanish-speaking places, I have had the opportunity of playing many characters because there are so many ways of speaking, you know? That is a tool that gives you a façade that helps you to carry out a character and to play around with a character. Here, it was in Portuguese, and I had never worked in Portuguese. It is maybe the most superficial interpretation that Spanish and Portuguese are similar, but they are very different… When you’re arriving to do this character, I was like “oh my god, I don’t speak it [Portuguese] that well.” We had a good fortune as well as the time frame and the context before when Portuguese and Castilian… were very similar. They allowed us to play another hypothesis: what would it sound like?
Lav, I have to ask you: at the 2025 New York Film Festival that went viral. People thought it was for real. You said that you landed on choosing Gael as your main actor during sex with [producers] Albert Serra and Joaquim Sapinho. I know this was not true, but can you say more?
Diaz: Albert Sierra and Joaquim Sapinho, we met, I don’t know the year, in Berlin, and we were having it out: Who’s going to play Magellan? It was so unanimous: Gael García Bernal. We knew that Gael is half-Caucasian, half-indigenous-Mexican. He’s not pure white, but it was a unanimous decision from the very start. I think it was Joaquim or Albert; we reached out to [Gael], and it just started moving. The lovemaking didn’t happen! We were hanging out over coffee and beer. Albert was mounting a play then in Berlin so we had time to just gather and talk about preparing for a film. It was Gael García Bernal, so unanimous.
People like that idea of that story being possibly real. Anyway, obviously, Gael is the most high-profile actor you’ve brought to your projects. How did having his name on the project enhance your film in terms of getting it made?
Diaz: Of course, bigger audiences now because there’s a lot of acceptance now because oftentimes when they hear about my works, it’s like, “Oh, a long film. Comatose films. This is for yoga,” something like that. It’s specialized for cinephiles. But now with Gael, there’s an openness. There’s an easier embrace of the work now, and we thank for Gael for coming.
Some reviews out of Cannes and beyond said this was your most accessible movie. Probably because it’s one of your shorter films. Do you feel challenged by that description, or like that your work is being interpreted as something more accessible?
Diaz: I never intended to hide my work; it’s just the nature of the beast is that I make this kind of cinema. It is my language in cinema. I don’t even think that is my most accessible work. It’s still part of the long, long work. I consider all my work as one. “Magellan” is still part of this continuing dialogue in this medium, trying to talk about the human condition. It’s always about that. It’s not accessible figuratively, but it’s more open now just because we have Gael and it’s a co-production with Europe.
Gael, what’s your first thought when you get a script for a movie called “Magellan,” which you think might be a biopic?
Garcia Bernal: We never received a script. [Laughs] It’s a feeling, an idea, an approach, a thought process in the works that Lav invited me into, and listening to him, it was very inspiring and very exciting to know what he was wanting to get to. I started to read a lot about Magellan, and I realized what I knew was basically the biographical, simple highlights. There’s also very little we know about Magellan. All these historical figures that have served an archetype for the process of myth-making and the historical creation of nations — sometimes they are just used at the most superficial level, and you never get to know what they are. Historically, the distance makes it complicated. Also, in those days, psychoanalysis didn’t exist. There was no explanation to the reasoning of certain things, so you have to search between the stones. You have to play around with that, to start to wonder and understand the context.
For example, we know the testament of Magellan. There is the testament. It’s there, and you get to learn a lot about the guy. But has anyone ever done the work of that testament and play it into the thought process of someone writing it, and how to incarnate it, and how to put it into a scene. You find yourself in a moment of excitement, it’s the first time, it’s playing around with this. To play and wander around and look and understand what the characters are.
Lav, you shot this film on a Panasonic camera — which is one that anyone — well, with a few thousand dollars — could buy off the internet. We’re at a time where young filmmakers are pushing to shoot on film. You are working against that here. Why shoot the movie on this camera? Was it liberating?
Diaz: I was in LA last week. The Panasonic guys met up with me. The GH7 [the camera that we used] sold out. Digital is liberation theology. You talk about revolutions. It’s a very potent tool amongst filmmakers who don’t have the means or the backing of studios. My early works were done that way. If you’re familiar with the Panasonic equipment, DVX100 is revolutionary. It liberated so many poor filmmakers who were outside the studios. It created those kinds of big movements. The GH series, the one that we used for “Magellan,” just came out in the first quarter of 2024. It has all the capabilities of a big camera. So why would you use a big camera when you can have something that’s more potent and easily accessible? At the same time, the idea of having a relationship with an equipment [where] you can stay in bed with it, understand it, how you use it, it is about that relationship as well. Understanding the M16, if you are using a gun. It is the same with a camera. It eventually, ultimately, becomes a part of you. I am more into using the tool, the medium, rather than going and have 16 people working on this big camera. All the measurements, all the camera operators. For me, it’s gone. The idea that you’re embodying the kind of movement, it’s gone for me. So I’d rather hold something, and it becomes my eye. My language.
Lav, I thought of you recently when Béla Tarr died. You must be inspired by him. You both work in this slow-cinema register. His camera is gliding, moving. Yours is static. But you both work in these long takes where a lot of activity is in the frame.
Diaz: It’s sad that he died. He’s a very stubborn man. He’s a good visionary. He gave us this gift of so many great films, and then the idea of education as well. In the last years of his life, he committed himself to educating young people, young filmmakers. He set up a school in Sarajevo; I was there. I taught there a few months. He has this vision of using the medium as a tool for education and reorienting humanity about the goodness of the human soul. Even his last film, “The Turin Horse,” it could look very apocalyptic, but at the same time it has this hope for humanity.
What was your personal experience with his stubbornness?
He wouldn’t take no for an answer. He would email you, “Lav, come to Sarajevo.” “Bela, I’m busy.” “No, no, come, please come.” And you say no. And he said, “No, you motherfucker, come. We’ll teach people.” He was that stubborn, of course, with his drinking as well.
“Magellan” is now in theaters in Los Angeles and New York, and more cities, and expanding across the U.S. from Janus Films.