Lav Diaz won’t astound veteran festival audiences with his signature style involving the use of extremely long black-and-white shots, nor will they balk at the excessive footage of his work, which includes the relatively short, four-hour Season of the Devil. This time around, the director, who is unsurpassed for his work with mise-en-scène and for creating ingenious allusions to the reality of his native land, presents a stylistically clear-cut image of the dark period of martial law in the 1970s, a time when armed militias committed crimes against the Philippine population. Nevertheless, the maverick writer-director’s latest offering will surprise even loyal fans, as it represents the filmmaker’s first foray into new genre turf: the musical – but instead of singing, his characters will melodically recite their lines, a cappella of course.