
The Woman Who Left
Ang Babaeng Humayo
SECTION: International Competition 2017
SCREENINGS
Sunday, 01.10., 11.30 a.m., kommkino
SYNOPSIS
After winning the Nuremberg International Human Rights Film Award four years ago with his adaptation of Dostoyevsky’s “Crime and Punishment” NORTE, Lav Diaz is back in competition with another award-winning literary adaptation, THE WOMAN WHO LEFT, which won the Golden Lion at the Venice film festival last year. Based on a short story by Tolstoy, the film is about a woman who seeks revenge against her former lover after spending decades in jail and finds unexpected support from the outcasts of society.
1997: Horacia has been in jail for murder for 30 years. Then new evidence comes to light, proving her innocence. She is free but broken after decades behind bars. The real murderer – her former lover – is wealthier than ever and lives in a high-security residential complex, in whose shadows Horacia meets different creatures of the night, including a transsexual prostitute, a homeless person plagued by demons and a hunchbacked egg trader. She becomes a generous friend while she patiently waits for the moment to wage her revenge. Lav Diaz has succeeded in making a visually stunning, archaic and deeply human drama about guilt and solidarity, absolution and revenge.
LAV DIAZ
Lav Diaz was born in Cotabato, the Philippines in 1958. He first studied business, but then transferred to the Mowelfund Film Institute in Manila. Starting out as a novelist and screenwriter, he directed several shorts and documentaries before making his first feature film. His second feature Naked under the moon was screened at the Berlinale Forum in 2000. With Norte – The End of History, Diaz won the International Competition at NIHRFF 2013. His five and a half hour opus From What is Before (NIHRFF 2015) won the Golden Leopard at Locarno in 2014. For The Woman Who Left he won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 2016.
FILMOGRAPHY
Naked Under the Moon (2000), Batang West Side (2002), Evolution of a Filipino Family (2005), Heremias, Book One (2006), Death in the Land of Encantos (2007), Melancholia (2008), Florentina Hubaldo (2012), Norte – The End of History (2013), From What is Before (2014), The Woman Who Left (2016)