Chilean AIDS Drama ‘The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo' Wins Un Certain Regard Award at Cannes
The Cannes Film Festival's second-most prestigious competition, Un Certain Regard, is typically dominated by newer, less heralded names in world cinema. But there was more star power than usual at stake in this year's awards ceremony, as pundits wondered whether one of the three debut features by prominent actors-turned-directors in this year's lineup — Kristen Stewart, Scarlett Johansson and Harris Dickinson — could land a prize.
As it turned out, people needn't have worried about a Hollywood takeover. Stewart's 'The Chronology of Water' and Johansson's 'Eleanor the Great' both went unawarded, as the jury threw a relative curveball in handing the Prix Un Certain Regard to Chilean director Diego Céspedes for his alluringly titled first feature 'The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo,' an offbeat study of a transgender commune living in the Chilean desert around the onset of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s.
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The film received mixed reviews when it premiered near the beginning of the festival: Variety critic Siddhant Adlakha wrote that it 'meanders on occasion, and never quite finds the right rhythm for its more traditional dialogue coverage,' but praised it for 'tremendously moving moments that stir the soul by scrutinizing the dueling cruelty and tenderness found within its characters.' The jury, meanwhile, praised it as 'raw and powerful and yet funny and wild,' before handing the prize to an astonished Céspedes, who stated tearily that his film 'began with all the angry lovers to just wanted to love like everybody else.'
The decision rested with a jury headed by a relative newcomer herself: 31-year-old British writer-director Molly Manning Walker won the top prize in Un Certain Regard two years ago for her vivid debut 'How to Have Sex,' and was joined on the panel by filmmakers Louise Courvoisier and Roberto Minervini, actor Nahuel Perez Biscayart and Rotterdam fest director Vanja Kaluđerčić.
Full list of winners:
Prix Un Certain Regard: 'The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo,' Diego Céspedes
Jury Prize: 'A Poet,' Simón Mesa Soto
Best Screenplay: Harry Lighton, 'Pillion'
Best Performance: Cléo Diara, 'I Only Rest in the Storm' and Frank Dillane, 'Urchin'
Best Director: Tarzan and Arab Nasser, 'Once Upon a Time in Gaza'
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