STORM CHILDREN

With striking black & white photography, this critically-acclaimed observational documentary from Philippine master filmmaker Lav Diaz takes stock of the devastation wrought by typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan) on the Philippine coastal town of Tacloban.

The film, which follows three children as they cope with the disaster—scavenging for food, telling stories, playing amid looming ships run aground on the town's main street, and diving from others that still sit in the sea—is a moving reflection on climate change and human resilience.

Lav Diaz is a renowned filmmaker whose previous works include Norte, The End of History Batang West Side, and many others.

Official Selection, Rotterdam Film Festival
Official Selection, MoMA Documentary Fortnight

"A haunting, elegiac report by one of our greatest living filmmakers from a village in the Philippines that was devastated by what has been called the most powerful typhoon on record." – Robert Greene, Sight & Sound

"A visually riveting, heart-rending account of young boys and girls struggling to survive in calamitous landscape… Diaz's achingly beautiful camera work never obscures the anguish at hand, instead only heightening the desolation of the (literally) windswept terrain; his trademark slow-burning, long takes are effective in conveying the victims' endurance in the dedication to Sisyphean tasks necessary for bare survival." – Hollywood Reporter

"Magnificent. The abstract minimalism and stasis of Diaz’s camerawork, coupled with the desolate absence of anything remotely resembling the everyday goings-on of a good-size city, gives STORM CHILDREN a strangely timeless feel that complements its stark beauty." – Variety