For filmmaker Diaz washhistory is not a collection of settled facts, but a site of ongoing investigation. His latest project, Magellanis a sprawling epic that tracks the defining final decade of the explorer’s life — from his 1511 injury during the Capture of Malacca to his 1521 death in the Philippines. While selected as the official Philippine entry for this year’s Oscarsthe film’s primary goal is more radical: a “forensic” stripping away of the myths that have defined the 16th-century voyage for generations.
Lapulapu and the Making of a Legend
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The core of Diaz’s interrogation lies in the portrayal of Lapulapu, the chieftain celebrated as the warrior who personally killed Magellan. In modern culture, Lapulapu is an omnipresent symbol of resistance, yet Diaz’s research led him to a conclusion that challenges the foundation of this heroism.
“As a journalist as well, I must go near the truth,” Diaz says. “You go all over the land, and you see big statues of him with his sword… But during the course of my research, there’s no Lapulapu. Nobody saw him.”
Instead, the film suggests the “hero” was a psychological invention by Humabon diagramthe ruler of Cebu. In Diaz’s retelling, Humabon utilized local folklore — the phantom of a fierce warrior — to manage the European threat. “It was the invention of Humabon,” Diaz explains. “It’s a wak-wak—a myth.” By framing Lapulapu as a phantasm created to intimidate the Spanish, Diaz shifts the narrative from a fair duel to one of complex regional political maneuvering.
Questioning the Official Record
To find this “truth,” Diaz looked past the primary historical source: Antonio Pigafetta. An Italian scholar who accompanied Magellan, Pigafetta’s journals provided the official narrative of the voyage. Diaz views these records with extreme skepticism, describing them as “very hagiographical” and overly devoted to Magellan’s image.
Specifically, Diaz targets the “lie” of the numbers reported in Pigafetta’s account of the Battle of Mactan. While Pigafetta claimed 60 Europeans were defeated by 2,000 men, Diaz points to records from just 50 years later describing the island as virtually uninhabitable, with a population of only around 150. “So what happened to the 2,000 men?” Diaz questions. “It doesn’t add up.”
Stripping away these inflated figures, Diaz describes a “forensic” reality in which the Spaniards were defeated by their own equipment and the terrain. Weighed down by “iron clothes” and heavy swords, they were forced to walk through long stretches of shallow water because their boats could not reach the shore. This logistical failure — rather than a massive army — led to their defeat.
Challenging a National Narrative
This interpretation has invited significant pushback. Diaz acknowledges that questioning a national hero has caused friction with the public and historians alike.
“I’m getting a lot of hatred because of that, because a lot of people are into Lapulapu,” Diaz admits. But he stands by the years of research that informed the project. “Let’s talk about it. It’s a continuing dialogue for me. We have to go back and examine that part of our history.”
Gael García Bernal on Playing Magellan
For Golden Globe winner Gael Garcia Bernalportraying Magellan required total immersion into a 16th-century consciousness — a task made more visceral by Diaz’s filming process. Bernal often received the script only on the morning of the shoot, leaving little room for traditional preparation. The approach forced a raw, immediate connection to the material.
“We cannot expect from them a dialogue that is incredibly poetic in what we understand as poetry now,” Bernal notes. He describes the mindset of the era as one in which every interaction was “raw, quiet, straightforward, and everything related to God.” In a time of forced conversions and the expulsion of Jewish and Moorish people from the Iberian Peninsula, faith was a matter of survival: “If you didn’t include God in your conversations, you were in trouble.”
Bernal’s performance depicts a man driven not by modern ego, but by a worldview in which the crossing of a strait was seen as “the most beautiful gift that God has ever given.” By removing modern psychoanalysis, Bernal captures the period’s singular sensibility — one that could wonder and hypothesize without contemporary insecurities.
Culture, Commerce, and Diaz’s Method
Diaz is known for a cinematic style that employs long, static frames to emphasize environment over performance. In an industry driven by rapid pacing, he sees this approach as a necessary defense of cinema as a cultural tool.
“If you go for the market, then it’s easy,” Diaz notes. “Don’t go beyond two hours. Go for all the conventions that you can have. But if you talk about culture in cinema, then there’s the work.”
A major component of this “work” is the inclusion of the Malay perspective through the character of Enrique, Magellan’s enslaved interpreter. Diaz felt it was essential to balance the “dominant eye of the West” with voices rarely heard in Western accounts. “We don’t have our voice in [traditional history],” Diaz says. “With MagellanI want to show there’s Enrique, there’s the Malay people.”
Magellan runs two hours and 45 minutes — relatively short for a Diaz film — but it maintains his commitment to the “soul of the human being.” He argues that the “noise” of modern filmmaking often distracts from the truth of the human condition. “If you focus on the commercial market, it’s easy. If you talk about the human being, it’s hard work.”
Distributed by Janus Films, Magellan is now in theaters.
