Chilean Drama The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo by Diego Céspedes won the main Un Certain Regard Prize this evening in Cannes.
Set in 1982, the film follows eleven-year-old Lidia 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 are accusing her family, Lidia must find out whether this myth is real or not.
A Poet, by Colombian filmmaker Simón Mesa Soto, won the Jury Prize. The film is Soto’s second feature, and it follows Oscar Restrepo, whose obsession with poetry brought him no glory. Aging and erratic, he has succumbed to the cliché of the poet in the shadows. Meeting Yurlady, a teenage girl from humble roots, and helping her cultivate her talent brings some light to his days, but dragging her into the world of poets may not be the way.
Best Screenplay went to Pillion, the debut feature from British filmmaker Harry Lighton. The film stars Harry Melling as a timid young gay man named Colin who comes into his sexuality when a biker named Ray (Alexander Skarsgård) takes him on as his sexual submissive.
This year’s jury was presided over by UK director, screenwriter, and cinematographer Molly Manning Walker, who was joined by French-Swiss director and screenwriter Louise Courvoisier, Croatian director of the International Film Festival Rotterdam Vanja Kaludjercic, Italian director, producer, and screenwriter Roberto Minervini, and Argentinian actor Nahuel Pérez Biscayart.
