Award-winning director Lav Diaz has added another accolade to his long list of achievements after winning the Brian Award at the ongoing 83rd Venice International Film Festival for his film Makikiraan Po or Let Us Through, Dear Ancestors.
In an interview with Inquirer.net USA, Lav shared how he was surprised to receive the Brian Award in a ceremony held at the Lido.
“It was a big surprise when the most radical group at the Lido reached out yesterday to tell Hazel Orencio, our line producer, that after their revolutionary lenses had checked all the works at the fest, they’re giving the gig to us, the Monty Python-inspired and big-dirty finger award Premio Brian (Brian Award), to our simple Filipino-prayer of a home movie, ‘Makikiraan Po (Let Us Through, Dear Ancestors),” he said.
“They said, ‘Thank you’ to the film that’s ‘continuing the greater cultural revolution.’ So, today, before the sun rises in the Eastern skies of Venice, over a cup of coffee by the steps of a desolate hotel called Mabapa, a little ceremony – it’s more of a ritual – shall be conducted,” he added.
The Brian Award or Premio Brian in Italian, is one of the side awards presented during the international film festival. According to the UAAR website, the Brian Award is given to the film that best promotes a secular vision of the world and highlights values associated with secularism, including rationality and scientific thought, democracy, pluralism, self-determination, freedom of conscience, expression, and research.
Previous Brian Award recipients, includes Paolo Sorrentino’s La Grazia (2025), Pedro Almodóvar’s The Room Next Door (2024), Guy Nattiv and Zar Amir Ebrahimi’s Tatami (2023), Tom McCarthy’s Spotlight (2015), Stephen Frears’s Philomena (2013) and George Clooney’s The Ides of March (2011).
Lav previously won several awards at the same film festival, including the Golden Lion for Best Film in 2016 for The Woman Who Left, which starred Charo Santos, John Lloyd Cruz, and Michael De Mesa.
In an exclusive interview with Variety, Lav explained that Makikiraan Po centers on the forced labor used to build the Philippines’ colonial-era churche“Forgetful Filipinos must learn, must know, must understand, that these structures were built by forced labor, and that they didn’t appear in their midst by some cosmic manifestations — it’s blood, sweat, tears, and deaths of our ancestors,” the director said
“Religion is one of the worst forms of violence," he added. “Faith can be a form of eternal subjugation, especially for the weak. Oftentimes, it blurs all of rationality; it becomes the truth of existence.”
The film stars Bart Guingona, Ronnie Lazaro, Christian Bables, Isabel Sandoval, Yul Servo, Bong Cabrera, Rafa Siguion-Reyna, and Amado Arjay Babon. It was produced by Montgomery Blencowe, husband of Kapamilya actress Lovi Poe, who also serves as one of the film’s executive producers, alongside Bianca Balbuena.
The film had its world premiere at the 83rd Venice Film Festival Official Selection Out of Competition.