Mike de Leon, one of the Philippines’ most influential filmmakers, has died at the age of 78.
His family confirmed the news Thursday through French distributor Carlotta Films, though no cause of death was disclosed.
The Film Development Council of the Philippines (FDCP) hailed De Leon as a visionary whose films left a lasting imprint on the country’s cultural and political landscape. “His consistent imagination to explore the language of cinema shaped what we understand of Philippine filmmaking today,” said FDCP chair Jose Javier Reyes.
Born into a family deeply tied to the industry—his grandmother, Doña Sisang de Leon, founded LVN Pictures—De Leon entered cinema as a cinematographer, earning recognition for his work on Lino Brocka’s “Maynila sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag” (1975). He made his directorial debut soon after with “Itim” (1976), which screened at the Cannes Film Festival.
Over the next decade, he produced some of the most enduring works in Philippine cinema: the cult satire “Kakabakaba Ka Ba?” (1980), the dark allegory “Batch ’81” (1982), and the politically charged “Sister Stella L.” (1984).
His films often confronted authoritarianism, repression, and abuses of power, themes he revisited throughout his career, including in the 2019 short “Kangkungan,” a critique of the Duterte administration.
After a long hiatus, De Leon returned to feature filmmaking with “Citizen Jake” (2018), a blend of personal narrative and political commentary starring journalist Atom Araullo.
His body of work was celebrated internationally, with a retrospective mounted at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2022.
In recent years, De Leon published “Last Look Back,” a photographic memoir of his career. He had been developing new projects during the pandemic, including “Unfinished Business” and “Sa Bisperas,” which he described as “’Itim’ for those in the twilight of their years.”
