Bogotá, 1996. In puritanical, conservative Colombia, the population is frightened: rumor has it that the Antichrist will land on Earth during an imminent eclipse of the red moon, the Lunada. With strange disappearances of young girls a daily occurrence and persistent rumors on the news, 13-year-old Mila (Stella Martínez) feels the gaze of others on her becoming more oppressive.
With her first feature film, Mi Bestia, presented at theAcid at the Cannes Film Festival and due in cinemas on September 4, 2024, Camila Beltràn has created a work on the borderline between coming-of-age and fantasy. Telling the story of a fragmented adolescence, the Colombian director usesdigital effects to jerk and ransack the square-format image, getting as close as possible to her heroine and making her - and, by extension, the viewer - the focus of men's unhealthy attention.
For if the devil is the film's starting point, the real beast prowling around Bogotá is theman who observes, touches, disturbs and imposes himself on the teenager. In reality less an apprenticeship film than an awareness-raising one, Mi Bestia is as much about denouncing religious fanaticism as it is about offering its heroine a feminist salute in the face of prevailing, ambient and normalized machismo.
The target of every male gaze on the cusp of puberty, Mila's body changes as she experiences the desires and disgust of those around her. And when the film finally shifts into the supernatural, the teenager undergoes many other metamorphoses - not unlike those undergone by Paul Kircher in Le Règne Animal. The difference is that Camila Beltràn opts for restraint, preferring to suggest rather than show. Until the long-awaited final scene, which is as liberating in content as it is in form.
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Dates and Opening Time
Starts September 4, 2024
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