Chilean filmmaker Diego Céspedes has made a striking debut with The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo, a haunting tale set against the backdrop of a remote desert mining town during the 1980s AIDS epidemic. The film, which won the top prize in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, explores themes of fear, prejudice, and the search for truth through the eyes of a young girl navigating a complex and often hostile world.
Céspedes, speaking with Première magazine, traced the origins of the film back to his childhood. “It all started about 7 years ago,” he said, “and although the script has evolved a lot since then, I would say it’s first and foremost strongly inspired by my own siblings.” The personal connection to the story is evident in the film’s emotional depth and nuanced portrayal of family dynamics.
The director described his writing process as solitary and deeply personal. “I write alone, because my scripts are very personal,” Céspedes explained. “I don’t look for the perfect structure for the audience, but to tell what I want to tell. The characters are completely fictional, but inspired by people I love. I place them in strange, fictional situations, and I go through these rollercoasters with them. The emotions they experience, I experience with them. That’s why I write alone and keep this process very intimate. I don’t want anyone to tell me how my story should be, because I know it by heart and I know where I want to take it.”
Securing funding for such a personal and unconventional project proved challenging. Céspedes acknowledged that producers and investors often prefer more structured narratives. However, he noted the crucial early support from French production companies. “Luckily for us, there was strong French involvement from the beginning,” he said. “After Chile, France was our first port of entry. What helped me a lot, I think, is that I had already made several short films, two of which had been presented at Cannes where I had already explored some of the themes that I develop in The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo. I moved forward slowly, with patience.”
Céspedes’s path to filmmaking was somewhat unconventional. Growing up in a working-class neighborhood of Santiago, he initially lacked access to the world of auteur cinema. He discovered it later, during his university years. “When you come from there, you don’t really have access to culture,” he said. “I didn’t discover auteur cinema until university, after 18 years. Before that, I only saw American commercial films. I liked them, but I didn’t connect with them emotionally. I remember very well the shock of discovering Lucrecia Martel’s La Ciénaga. It was totally different from anything I had seen before. Before that, I rejected this type of cinema, which I found too academic, not for me. This film opened my eyes. I started watching a lot of others, and I discovered that cinema was natural to me.”
He initially considered a technical role, drawn to cinematography, editing, and sound design. However, after writing a short film, L’Eté du lien électrique, and receiving encouragement from a professor, he embraced directing. The film’s selection and award at Cannes’ Cinéfondation competition solidified his decision. He followed it with another short, Les créatures qui fondent au soleil, also shown at Cannes, and is currently working on a third to complete a trilogy.
The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo subtly addresses the AIDS epidemic, without explicitly making it the central theme. Céspedes explained that the film is deeply rooted in his childhood experiences. “When I was a child, my family ran a hair salon in the suburbs of Santiago where we lived. They worked with homosexuals who all, without exception, died of AIDS. As I grew up, my mother told me these terrible stories about this horrible disease, which I didn’t really understand. I was very afraid of it. And because I lived without real access to information, I remained with my fear, without explanation to free myself from it. This fear dominated my childhood. So when I started writing films, it seemed natural to talk about it, to integrate it as a context, as a reality that surrounds my characters.”
The film’s visual atmosphere, Céspedes explained, was inspired by old children’s books – beautiful and well-composed, but with stories that can appear unsettling when viewed through adult eyes. He collaborated closely with cinematographer Angello Faccini to achieve this effect. “I chose Angello Faccini for his talent, of course, but also because I was looking for someone who hadn’t shot too much,” Céspedes said. “When you make a first film, many experienced technicians tend to want to tell you what to do. I wanted the opposite: someone open, willing to welcome new ideas, but also to propose them. I discovered Angello because he had just shot the feature film of a Spanish friend, Sandra Romero Acevedo. The film hadn’t been released yet, but she showed me some scenes and I immediately wanted to meet him. We connected well, and we decided to work together.”
The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo premiered at the 78th Cannes Film Festival in May 2025, winning the top prize in the Un Certain Regard section. It was selected as Chile’s entry for Best International Feature Film at the 98th Academy Awards, but was not nominated. The film was released in Spain on , and is scheduled for release in Chile in 2026.
