Strand Releasing has announced the theatrical release of the The Untamed / La región salvaje, the fourth film by Mexican director Amat Escalante. The film opens Friday, July 21 at the IFC Center in New York City, and on Friday, July 28 at the Cinefamily, Laemmle Monica Film Center and Laemmle Playhouse 7 in Los Angeles.
The film, written by Escalante and Gibrán Portela and starring Ruth Ramos and Simone Bucio, follows young mother Alejandra who is a working housewife, raising two boys with husband Angel in a small city. Her brother Fabián works as a nurse in a local hospital. Their provincial lives are upset with the arrival of mysterious Verónica. Sex and love can be fragile in certain regions where strong family values, hypocrisy, homophobia, and male chauvinism exist.
Verónica convinces them that in the nearby woods, inside an isolated cabin, dwells something not of this world that could be the answer to all of their problems. Something whose force they cannot resist and with whom they must make peace or suffer its wrath.
Escalante became the fourth director (after Martin Scorsese, Paul Thomas Anderson, and Emir Kusturica) to ever win the Best Director Award both at the Cannes and Venice Film Festival: for Heli at the French Riviera in 2013, and for The Untamed in the Italian festival in 2015.
