Latest news with #Céspedes
Time of India
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Time of India
Chilean drama on AIDS, ‘The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo', takes home the title at the Un Regards Competition at Cannes
1 2 This year's Un Regard Competition had a lot of talent in terms of nominees. Amongst a sea of winners like 'Urchin', 'Once Upon a Time in Gaza,' and 'A Poet', the Chilean drama 'The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo' also managed to bag the title at the competition. 'The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo' wins big at the Un Regards festival Un Regard Competition is one of the most prestigious competitions at the Cannes Film Festival. As per reports from Variety, Chilean director Diego Céspedes managed to take home the title at the Un Regard competition this year. Typically, the competition nomination consists of films and projects that have not actively received a fan following or have been well heard of. This year saw an influence of actors turned directors. The likes of Kristen Stewart , Scarlett Johansson and Harris Dickinson all recently made their directorial debuts at the Cannes Film Festival. There were rumours in the air that since the competition this year was fierce, one of the actors who made their directorial debut may be winning the title; however, it all proved to be false as the Chilean drama on AIDS won the big title. Director Diego Céspedes shares a speech with the audience at Cannes During his acceptance speech for the Un Regard Competition, director Céspedes shared a few words as his film got the special title. During his speech, he cited that the feature project 'began with all the angry lovers who just wanted to love like everybody else.' by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like 최저가 임플란트, 품질은 프리미엄 그대로. 추가금 일절 없습니다. 추가금 일절없음 더 알아보기 Undo During his speech, he continued, sharing that "This award doesn't celebrate perfection. It celebrates that fear, that stubbornness to exist just as we are, even when it makes others uncomfortable'. More on the feature that won big at Cannes, 'The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo' The drama feature, which also marks the first feature project of Céspedes, 'The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo', is an ambitious project about the life of a transgender commune as they choose to stay in the Chilean desert. The film is set against the backdrop of the 1980s, when the AIDS epidemic was just at its beginning stages. The jury, right before handing over the titles, shared that the film is 'raw and powerful and yet funny and wild". More winners at the Cannes Film Festival Other than the ambitious project of 'The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo', many other projects managed to win big at this year's Cannes festival. The film 'Once Upon a Time in Gaza' managed to bag the directing award for the Palestinian twin filmmakers, Arab and Tarzan Nasser, who were behind the beautiful project. On the other hand, Dickinson's directorial debut 'Urchin' was also awarded a title by the jury, as star Frank Dillane was awarded the best performance award. Cleo Diara also managed to bag the award for her role in 'I Only Rest in the Storm'. Check out our list of the latest Hindi , English , Tamil , Telugu , Malayalam , and Kannada movies . Don't miss our picks for the best Hindi movies , best Tamil movies, and best Telugu films .
Yahoo
16-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Cannes Hidden Gem: ‘The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo' Is a Modern Western About Family (Exclusive Clip)
Is love a danger, or will it save the day? Chilean writer-director Diego Céspedes explores that question and the theme of family and community as a refuge in his feature debut The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo, which world premieres in Cannes' Un Certain Regard section on Thursday. It tells the story of Lidia, 11, 'who grows up in a loving queer family pushed to the edge of an unwelcoming dusty mining town,' according to a synopsis. 'They are blamed for a mysterious illness that's starting to spread – said to be passed through a single gaze, when one man falls in love with another.' More from The Hollywood Reporter Cannes Fest Draws Unusually High Number of Emmy Hopefuls Entertainment Squad Takes 'Walter, Grace & The Submarine' for North America (Exclusive) Kristen Stewart Wants to "Crash and Burn" in Cannes: "We Barely Finished This Movie" Check out an exclusive clip for the movie, produced by Quijote Films in Chile and Les Valseurs in France, with sales being handled by Charades, here. The modern western, starring Tamara Cortés, Matías Catalán, and Paula Dinamarca, may be set in the Chilean desert in the 1980s, well before the 29-year-old was born. But the queer director knows the challenges his characters face, including violence, fear and hatred, from his family's experience. 'My family comes from the suburbs of Chile's capital, Santiago, and they rented this little hairdresser salon and hired gay people to cut hair. At that time, it was just gay people cutting hair,' he tells THR. 'My mother was very close to them, and all of them died of AIDS. And I remember that my mother didn't have much information about it. We just heard that it was a very dangerous thing that can be transmitted very easily. It was just scary.' That is part of the context in which Céspedes created his story. 'I was also inspired by real people and how dissidents and transgender people, when they are abandoned by society, create communities and families,' he explains. 'That is special for me and the core of the film, the creation of a real family that is not sharing blood.' Finding Lidia took a year of auditions before the creative team hit the jackpot with Cortés. 'It was her first time around trans women and such a diverse group,' the director recalls. 'But when we put them together, she was very comfortable and very natural. And she has this mix of an adult attitude and also this kind of humor.' The idea that a gaze could transmit AIDS is not one Céspedes ever heard anyone suggest. 'It's a total creation, but in real life, I have heard very similar things,' he says before sharing thoughts fit for the post-truth world. 'There was ignorance at that time, and even now. When you don't have access to information, you create explanations, because us human beings need an explanation for everything. So, I thought that in this fictional town, what they think about the disease can be something that does not confront reality. We're having sex between men, and that's the main way of transmission. But why would we say that, if we can create another explanation that fits our way of seeing life?' In that sense, The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo is a plea to face reality and others. In fact, the need for being open to encountering people who are different is a core message that Céspedes feels is very timely. 'We grow up in a generation where people are taking very hard positions on who's the bad one and who's the good one, but I think we are missing that conversation and that looking each other in the eye.' Diego Céspedes Is the filmmaker optimistic that even in a divided world, humans can build real connections? 'That's a possibility, even if we don't see it too much in our modern society,' he tells THR. 'As human beings, we can talk, and we can find agreement when we look each other in the eye. We need to talk more.' Best of The Hollywood Reporter 'The Goonies' Cast, Then and Now "A Nutless Monkey Could Do Your Job": From Abusive to Angst-Ridden, 16 Memorable Studio Exec Portrayals in Film and TV The 10 Best Baseball Movies of All Time, Ranked
Washington Post
16-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
Banned in fascist Italy, ‘There's No Turning Back' gets new life
When it was published in Italy in 1938, 'There's No Turning Back,' by Alba de Céspedes, became an instant bestseller and was translated into 24 languages. Not long after, it was banned by the fascist government. Though it came back into circulation in Europe and had a screen adaptation in Italy, neither the book nor its author received much attention in the United States until recently. In 2016, Elena Ferrante published 'Frantumaglia,' a collection of letters and reflections in which she mentioned Céspedes among the few authors she could read while working on her own novels. This led to a widespread rediscovery. In 2023, an edition of Céspedes's novel 'Forbidden Notebook' (1952), translated by Ann Goldstein (also Ferrante's translator), was published here to rave reviews, as was 'Her Side of the Story' (1949), translated by Jill Foulston. Italian Cuban activist and author Céspedes (1911-1997) has a deep backlist, and with 'There's No Turning Back,' we are close to its beginning. The book is a coming-of-age novel following a group of eight young women in Rome. They meet at a women's college called the Grimaldi, run strictly by nuns, originally gathering as a study group for literature students. What made the book inflammatory, and what got it banned, is its focus on women's agency in their own complex destinies. As translator, Goldstein explains in her introduction, 'In all her novels de Céspedes investigates women's attempts to both deconstruct and construct their lives and gain a sense of themselves, as she investigated her own life.' In the novel, this is expressed very directly by Silvia Custo, the most serious student of the group. 'It's as if we're on a bridge,' she tells the others, creating an image that comes up repeatedly. 'We've already departed from one side and haven't yet reached the other. What we've left behind we don't look back at. What awaits us is still enveloped in fog. We don't know what we'll find when the fog clears.' This notion of unknown and interesting choices about women's futures puts 'There's No Turning Back' at odds with the fascist ideal of the 'sposa e madre esemplare,' exemplary wife and mother. For these young women, motherhood and marriage are more problems than they are goals. The most man-obsessed, a Spaniard named Vinca, talks to her crush on the phone every night. Emanuela, one of the lead characters, is at the Grimaldi because she's had a baby out of wedlock with a now-deceased soldier. Augusta is the oldest member of the group; she's 'close to forty' and is a prolific aspiring writer. She makes the situation plain to Emanuela: 'Our parents shouldn't send us to the city; afterward, even if we return, we're bad daughters, bad wives. Who can forget having been master of herself? And in our villages a woman who's lived alone in the city is a fallen woman. Those who remained, who passed from the father's authority to the husband's, can't forgive us for having had the key to our own room, going out and coming in when we want. And men can't forgive us for having studied, for knowing as much as they do.' The most 'fallen' of the group is Xenia, whose parents have mortgaged their vineyard to finance her education. When she fails her first set of exams, she runs away to Milan in despair, but not before stealing an emerald ring from Emanuela's room. There's a 'Little Women'-style 'Beth' character, coughing on page one; a pair of girls from Puglia, one very wealthy and one not, who become involved in a rather dastardly love triangle and one of whom has a series of sexual fantasies that cannot have been pleasing to the fascist censor: an Indian prince with a pearl quivering on his forehead who 'returned every night, with his gardens, his carpets, his persuasive voice, his hands.' You go, Valentina. With its imperfect, passionate characters, and its passages of intense analysis of their relationships and their inner lives, Céspedes's novel will appeal to fans of Ferrante and Natalia Ginzburg. Reading the book in times nearly as chaotic as those in which it was published delivers a kind of subversive pleasure. Marion Winik, host of the NPR podcast 'The Weekly Reader,' is the author of numerous books, including 'First Comes Love' and 'The Big Book of the Dead.' By Alba de Céspedes, translated from Italian by Ann Goldstein. Washington Square Press. 304 pp. $27.99
