From left, actors Cherie Gil, Bernardo Bernardo, director Lav Diaz, actors Susan Africa, and Joel Saracho pose prior to the premiere of “A Lullaby to the Sorrowful Mystery” in Berlin, Thursday

Daring Filipino director Lav Diaz brings his movie house of pain to Berlin this week, shooting for the top prize with an eight-hour epic that tests human patience and endurance.

Diaz weaves the rich revolutionary history and mythology of his impoverished homeland in “A Lullaby to the Sorrowful Mystery,” the longest film ever to compete at the Berlinale, but still three hours shorter than his longest work.

“My principle is, the filmmaker shouldn’t struggle by himself…The viewer must struggle with me. Let’s experience this thing together and be immersed in this universe,” the 57-year-old Diaz told AFP in Manila before he left for Berlin.

Festival organizers have inserted one interval into the epic, but Diaz is relaxed about how audiences will cope.

“I understand the demands on the body, you need to defecate and urinate,” he says.

“You’re free. You can go home and … marry your girlfriend, you come back the film is still rolling. It’s about life. Ultimately, cinema is about life itself.”

“Lullaby” chronicles the futile search by Gregoria de Jesus — one of the few women leaders of the Philippine resistance against Spain — for the body of her husband, Andres Bonifacio, who was executed on a mountain by a rival faction of the rebellion.

Diaz weaves into the narrative the legend of the Filipino Hercules, who is perpetually holding the edges of two mountains to keep them from crashing into each other, and also the “Tikbalang,” a cigar-puffing monster with the head of a horse and the body of a man.

Another strand in the black and white movie is a retelling of “El Filibusterismo” a politically charged novel written during the Spanish period by the country’s national hero, Jose Rizal, to rouse nationalist spirit.

“I combined all these threads, and when you view the film, it is about the search for the Filipino soul,” Diaz said.

Diaz has won numerous international and local awards. One of his most recent works, the four-hour-long “Norte, the End of History,” was screened at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival.

This year, a seven-member jury headed by three-time Academy Award winner Meryl Streep will select the winner of the Golden Bear, Berlinale’s top honor.

But Diaz said he was not doing films to win awards or make money, but rather to help his countrymen find their national identity after centuries of colonization by Spain and the United States, and more recently, a brutal dictatorship.

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