Portugal’s legendary explorer Ferdinand Magellan gets an epic biopic courtesy of Filipino filmmaker and societal historian Lav Diaz.

Gael Garcia Bernal, Mexico’s international star, portrays the power-mad Magellan who died at 41, in a battle with natives he was intent on conquering.

“I wanted to tackle the subject, because Magellan is such a huge thing in our country, in our culture. I want to imagine what happened,” Diaz, 67, began in a joint virtual interview with his star. “Part of it is I want to understand that part of our history more.

“Magellan is huge, so I don’t know when we started where to start really. I don’t know the length, either.”

Diaz is a pioneer of what’s known as “slow cinema,” films with no close-ups. One of his films is 10 hours.

“The first rough cut I did was more than nine hours. The first real rough cut was three hours, 20 minutes. Then my co-editor and cinematographer, a great guy, a genius, he trimmed it to two hours, 45 minutes. That’s the final cut.”

Looking at the finished film, what does he think of Magellan? What kind of a man was he?

“If you can see the whole thing that we did, we tried to understand him as a real human being. There is no spectacle around him, the way they do with these big films on Napoleon Bonaparte. Of course, Gael is there as well.”

Bernal’s research began with extensive reading and growing a beard that was the first thing to go when he finished filming.

He considers it “superficial to analyze the character through our perspective.

“The intention is to make a film that is more a discussion, a conversation, because in those days, the world was very different.

“For example, in the official history this has been talked about as if they were doing a ‘journey of discovery.’

“But,” Bernal, 47, pointed out, “in the Malay area, China, India, there was already a huge amount of wealth and commerce and intercultural exchanges. They were all over the place — and the Europeans were the last ones (to arrive). So we never see it from another perspective.”

How weird, or perhaps normal, is it to make a period film set in 1500 in the 21st century?

“You create a civilized world and you have fun,” Diaz said, “It’s also a journey. All my works are mainly on Philippine history and this one is so far away, like 500 years ago, you have to imagine that period.

“Then it’s reimagining these things at the same time. What happened then and what is still happening now? Colonialism, as expected. Imperialism. The conversions. It’s still the same. It’s still happening.”

“Magellan” opens Friday