Let Us Through, Dear Ancestors

A church is to grow out of the jungle. But the stones it is built from cost human lives. On a Philippine island in 1617, the Spanish priest Enciso rules, subjugating the native population in the name of Christ and sexually exploiting women. He sends his son Dungwen on a dangerous journey to fetch marble for the house of God. While bandits lurk in the jungle, a healer resists the forced Christianisation. The promise of salvation has become a system of violence and exploitation.

Lav Diaz, the great chronicler of Philippine history, continues his examination of the consequences of colonialism after his film “Magellan” (shown at 14 Films in 2025). But this time he looks less at the conquerors than at those whose voices were erased from history. In hypnotic, austere black-and-white images that make the jungle appear as mighty as the walls of the church, Diaz creates a stirring epic about the violence of religious certainties. The title refers to an old custom: whoever enters the land of the ancestors asks for permission. But the colonisers never asked; they simply took everything and sinned against land and people, which Diaz dissects with ice-cold precision. A truly monumental film about the presumption of wanting to own the whole earth in the name of heaven and make it subject to oneself.