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? Out of what past does this detective emerge?

Shot on 16mm under duress at the freezing turn of the millennium by a young, fearless Lav Diaz (Norte, The End of History), Batang West Side remains 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.