The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo
La Misteriosa Mirada del Flamenco
The winner of the 2025 Cannes Un Certain Regard Prize, this AIDS-era allegory follows a young girl and her found family as they confront a hostile, fearful society.
The Atacama Desert, 1982: a community of male miners survives in precarious coexistence with the drag queens and transgender women who perform in the local cantina, Alaska House. There, headliner Flamingo and her fabulous colleagues, led by matron Mama Boa, care for orphaned 11-year-old Lidia. Like them, she doesn’t quite belong in town, but their communal love keeps any chauvinistic hostility at bay. When the men hear about a strange, deadly illness transmitted through exchanged looks, however, they waste no time casting aspersions – and blows – at the outsiders who they assume are the source.
Chilean writer/director Diego Céspedes’s Cannes prize-winning first feature playfully melds the western’s taut brutality and the telenovela’s comic melodrama with the mystical flourishes of magic realism and the curiosity of coming of age. The feisty yet doting mother figures played by Matías Catalán and Paula Dinamarca lend scaffolding to Tamara Cortés’s heart-rending portrayal of innocence gone sour, while cinematographer Angello Faccini captures both the landscape’s stifling isolation and the colourful, cosy world of Alaska House. Touching and visually seductive, The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo is an eye-opening story of queer strength, acceptance and the importance of seeing the people society marginalises as human and whole.
“Céspedes’ gentle, funny, passionate, and occasionally absurdist debut drama packs an enormous emotional punch … Lands on tremendously moving moments that stir the soul by scrutinizing the dueling cruelty and tenderness found within its characters.” – Variety
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Director Diego Céspedes and key cast member Sirena Matilde are guests of the festival and will be in attendance at all sessions of the film.
Tickets
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