The Dominican Republic was the last Latin American country to announce its candidate for Best International Film at the 94th edition of the Academy Awards selection Holy Beasts / La fiera y la fiesta by the directorial duo of Laura Amelia Guzmán and Israel Cárdenas.
Starring internationally renowned actors Geraldine Chaplin and Udo Kier, the film tells the story of aging punk diva Vera, who arrives in Santo Domingo to direct a musical film. Welcoming her are two other old friends, the producer and the cinematographer, with whom Vera spent the golden years of their youth together as an artistic troupe. The Caribbean production is sumptuous, the musical numbers are grand. But mysterious forces threaten the shoot and death begin to creep up on the haunted production.
Holy Beasts is inspired by the filmography and life of the Dominican filmmaker and artist Jean-Louis Jorge (1947-2000) was a Dominican filmmaker and the author of a sensual and transgressive body of work. This marks the second time that a film made by Guzmán and Cárdenas represents the Dominican Republic at the Oscars after Sand Dollars, also starring Geraldine Chaplin, did it in 2015.
