Batang West Side

Investigating the murder of the young Hanzel (Yul Servo), shot dead one winter night on West Side Ave, police detective Juan Mijares (Joel Torres) plumbs the depths of the Filipino youth gangs of Jersey city who trade in shabu – crystal meth. Talking to the boy’s mother, remarried to an American, to his grandfather, an ex-soldier as well as to his American-born girlfriend, bigger questions emerge: what dark history has pushed so many Filipinos to migrate this wintry land? Why are these the conditions of their children? What past does this detective emerge from?

Shot at the freezing turn of the millennium by a young and fearless Lav Diaz (Norte, The End of History), Batang West Side is a timeless epic about Filipino immigration over generations. Diaz’s sole film shot in the United States, and the longest film to be made by a Southeast Asia director at the time, Diaz does not shy away from the power of cumulative answers, revealed intricately over the course of the kind epic runtime and Dostoyevskian themes that would become hallmarks in the oeuvre of the Filipino master.

Lav Diaz (born Lavrente Indico Diaz on 30 December 1958) is a Filipino filmmaker. He is known as one of the key members of the slow cinema movement, having made several of the longest narrative films on record. Although he had been making films since the late 90s Diaz didn't attract much public attention outside of the Philippines and the festival circuit until the release of his 2013 film Norte, the End of History, which was entered into Un Certain Regard section of the 2013 Cannes Film Festival. His three subsequent films have received much critical attention and many awards with 2014's From What Is Before earning him the Golden Leopard at the 2014 Locarno International Film Festival as well as a nomination for the Asian Film Award for Best Director, 2016's A Lullaby to the Sorrowful Mystery competing for the Golden Bear at the 66th Berlin International Film Festival and winning the Alfred Bauer Prize, and 2016's The Woman Who Left competing at the 73rd Venice International Film Festival and winning the Golden Lion.