DIRECTOR: Diego Cespedes
STARRING: Tamara Cortes, Matias Catalan, Paula Dinamarca
RUNNING TIME: 1 hr 44 minutes
LANGUAGE: Spanish
PLOT: As a mysterious and deadly disease begins to spread, a legend emerges: it passes between two men with nothing more than a glance, the moment they fall in love. While suspicion falls heavily on her family, Lidia must uncover the truth and decide whether the myth is real, or just a weapon of fear.
GENRE: Drama
FILMING LOCATION: Santiago, Chile
To check out all previous submissions for Chile, click HERE.
STARRING: Tamara Cortes, Matias Catalan, Paula Dinamarca
RUNNING TIME: 1 hr 44 minutes
LANGUAGE: Spanish
PLOT: As a mysterious and deadly disease begins to spread, a legend emerges: it passes between two men with nothing more than a glance, the moment they fall in love. While suspicion falls heavily on her family, Lidia must uncover the truth and decide whether the myth is real, or just a weapon of fear.
GENRE: Drama
FILMING LOCATION: Santiago, Chile
To check out all previous submissions for Chile, click HERE.
FILM REVIEW:
(This review contains spoilers.)
“I think it's because to hunt or to be hunted is inevitable for all animals."
Diego Céspedes’ The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo drifts between myth and reality with a precision that is both unsettling and poetic. Set against the backdrop of a small Chilean mining town in the 1980s, the film captures the fear and superstition surrounding the arrival of an unknown disease. Céspedes chooses not to present this fear in straightforward terms of contagion, but instead through the lens of rumor, legend, and desire. The atmosphere is thick with whispers and half-truths, where the line between love and danger collapses into something inseparable.
The film is visually striking, not in a flamboyant way, but through its quiet, controlled imagery. The dusty landscapes and dimly lit interiors frame the characters as if they are already living in a ghost story. Céspedes is less interested in showing us what the disease “is” and more concerned with how people imagine it, how imagination itself becomes a kind of infection. This is where the title earns its weight: the flamingo, with its improbable color and searching gaze, becomes a metaphor for the beauty and terror of looking too closely at desire.
At the center is Lidia, a young girl caught in the clash between her family’s vulnerability and the community’s suspicion. Her presence gives the film a fragile anchor, as if her attempts to untangle truth from myth are also attempts to make sense of a world where prejudice hides behind the language of protection. Her perspective brings tenderness to a story that could easily have been consumed by its darkness. Through her, the film suggests that the act of questioning, of not simply accepting what others declare as truth, is itself a form of resistance.
The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo is less about disease than about the mechanisms of fear. Céspedes shows how myths can weaponize intimacy, turning love into something dangerous, even fatal. The film’s real power lies in exposing how societies construct stories to explain the unexplainable, and how those stories often carry cruelty beneath their surface. By weaving together rumor, longing, and suspicion, Céspedes reminds us that the most contagious force is not illness but the narratives we choose to believe.
(This review contains spoilers.)
“I think it's because to hunt or to be hunted is inevitable for all animals."
Diego Céspedes’ The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo drifts between myth and reality with a precision that is both unsettling and poetic. Set against the backdrop of a small Chilean mining town in the 1980s, the film captures the fear and superstition surrounding the arrival of an unknown disease. Céspedes chooses not to present this fear in straightforward terms of contagion, but instead through the lens of rumor, legend, and desire. The atmosphere is thick with whispers and half-truths, where the line between love and danger collapses into something inseparable.
The film is visually striking, not in a flamboyant way, but through its quiet, controlled imagery. The dusty landscapes and dimly lit interiors frame the characters as if they are already living in a ghost story. Céspedes is less interested in showing us what the disease “is” and more concerned with how people imagine it, how imagination itself becomes a kind of infection. This is where the title earns its weight: the flamingo, with its improbable color and searching gaze, becomes a metaphor for the beauty and terror of looking too closely at desire.
At the center is Lidia, a young girl caught in the clash between her family’s vulnerability and the community’s suspicion. Her presence gives the film a fragile anchor, as if her attempts to untangle truth from myth are also attempts to make sense of a world where prejudice hides behind the language of protection. Her perspective brings tenderness to a story that could easily have been consumed by its darkness. Through her, the film suggests that the act of questioning, of not simply accepting what others declare as truth, is itself a form of resistance.
The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo is less about disease than about the mechanisms of fear. Céspedes shows how myths can weaponize intimacy, turning love into something dangerous, even fatal. The film’s real power lies in exposing how societies construct stories to explain the unexplainable, and how those stories often carry cruelty beneath their surface. By weaving together rumor, longing, and suspicion, Céspedes reminds us that the most contagious force is not illness but the narratives we choose to believe.
