John Lloyd Cruz: 'Para sa Pilipino. Para sa Lahat na Pinatay at Mga Naiwan Nila'

Over the weekend, it was announced that the Philippines' very own John Lloyd Cruz had just won the Boccalino d’Oro prize for Best Actor at the 76th Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland.

Cruz reprised his role as Lieutenant Hermes Papauran in Lav Diaz's Essential Truths of The Lake. This film marks Diaz's sixth screen collaboration with Cruz, and is a follow-up to last year's When the Kung Wala Na Ang Alon. The two started working together in Ang Babaeng Humayo back in 2016. For this movie, he is joined by Hazel Orencio, Shaina Magdayao, Bart Guingona, and Agot Isidro.

“Para sa Pilipino. Para sa lahat na pinatay at mga naiwan nila,” the actor said in his acceptance speech.

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Papauran, the obsessive investigator Cruz played, is someone who “when faced with Philippine President Duterte’s bloody murders and brazen lies, continues his struggle to find a resolution to a 15-year-old case around a volcanic ash-laden landscape and an impenetrable lake.” The film itself is an exercise in reckoning with the violence, murderous atrocities, and deceit during the Duterte administration's War on Drugs campaign.

Essential Truths of The Lake was the only Southeast Asian entry at Locarno Film Festival’s main competition. The Boccalino d'Oro prize is handed out by its Independent Critics Jury.

Among those who had first congratulated Cruz was Film Development Council of the Philippines (FDCP) Chairman Tirso Cruz III, who aptly said: “It is with great joy and pride that I congratulate one of the most talented artists of our country, Mr. John Lloyd Cruz."

A post from the FDCP also noted that this makes Cruz only the second actor ever to receive the Golden Jug Award for Best Actor after Orencio did it in 2014 for Diaz's Mula sa Kung Ano Ang Noon. The auteur bagged the Golden Leopard Prize or Best Picture Award that same year.