Chile has become the second Latin American country to select its candidate for Best International Film at the 98th Academy Awards. The Chilean Film Academy announced that Diego Céspedes’ debut feature The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo /La misteriosa mirada del flamenco will represent the country in the competition.
Winner of the Un Certain Regard Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival, where it had its world premiere last May, the film is set in 1982 and follows 11-year-old Lidia, who lives with her beloved queer family in a desert mining town in northern Chile. As an unknown and deadly disease begins to spread, legend has it that it is transmitted between two men through a simple glance when they fall in love. While people accuse her family, Lidia must find out whether this myth is real or not.
The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo will have its North American premiere this week as part of the 50th edition of the Toronto International Film Festival.
Among other titles competing for the Chilean Oscar candidacy were The Hyperboreans / Los Hiperbóreos by Cristóbal León and Joaquín Cociña, and The Wave / La ola by Sebastián Lelio, who gave the South American nation its first Oscar for Best International Film in 2018 with A Fantastic Woman / Una mujer fantástica. In addition to Lelio’s win, Chile was also nominated in 2012 for Pablo Larraín’s No.
