The Halt

“Having frequently set his films in the past as a means of reflecting on the present, Diaz goes the sci-fi route with The Halt, whose phantasmagoric dystopia, set in the year 2034, is a thinly disguised representation of the contemporary Philippines. Not only does everything look the same – a budgetary limitation that the director turns into a Brechtian asset – but the country is ruled by President Nirvano Reyes Navarro, a grotesque despot whose white-shirted outfits and penchant for feeding the flesh of drug addicts to his pet crocodiles clearly signal him as stand-in for the actual president, Rodrigo Duterte.” —Giovanni Marchini Camia, Sight & Sound