Did you like Animal Kingdom? You’ll love Mi Bestia, a personal and recognizable gem presented in Cannes!

A dark work, loaded with genre movie references

Bogota, Colombia. As a lunar eclipse prepares, a wave of kidnappings hits the city. The religious community is especially worried: according to the prophecies, this heavenly event coincided with the appearance of the devil himself.

Thirteen-year-old Mila (Stella Martinez) feels that her life is slowly changing: more persistent male gazes, first periods, inexplicable impulses… Could this metamorphosis be connected to the upcoming eclipse?

“With this film I tried to show that women are not afraid”

Presented in the ACID category at the last edition of the Cannes Film Festival, Mi Bestia is the first feature film of Colombian filmmaker Camila Beltrán. An extremely personal first draft as it is partly autobiographical and therefore full of memories.

“The movie comes from my childhood memorieshe says When I was a teenager in Bogotá and on this particular day when the prophecy came out: suddenly people really believed that the devil was coming! Everywhere they were just talking about it. Mi Bestia’s point of departure comes from this intersection of a young girl’s adolescence and the anticipation of this prophecy.“

Mila’s inevitable metamorphosis takes place in a particularly superstitious religious context. Both physical and psychological, this transformation is enough to make the young woman worry, because neither her mother nor the teaching of nuns at her school prepared her for it. The only female figure of reference, his nanny Dora, played with sensitivity by actress Mallely Aleyda Murillo Rivas, represents a form of intrusion that is underappreciated in the eyes of this pious and conservative society.

“I wanted to connect the issue of the devil with the perception of femininityCamila Beltran explains. Colombia is a very Catholic country. We really believe in God and yet fear the devil! We are also afraid of the unknown. Dora’s character is a stranger. She embodies this form of association that some make between the woman, the devil, and the monster. With this film, I tried to show that women are not afraid.“

Beyond the social and moral issues introduced by his plot, I’m a beast Loaded with references to modern fantasy cinema, it will remind fans of genre gems like Grave or The Animal Kingdom, as well as great classics like Carrie at the Devil’s Ball, for which the director expresses his love. In particular, the Lunada sequence, a religious festival aimed at warding off evil that contemplates the appearance of a long-awaited lunar eclipse, is a climax of intrigue and an essential scene typology of these gendered films.

“In my film Lunada is associated with eclipses and predictions, it is a way to ward off an impending event. I didn’t want to make a very intimate film. The party allowed me to bring the film into the category of fantasy teen movies that I love so much, like Carrie.”

A dark and personal romp at the crossroads of auteur cinema and teen films, Mi Bestia is available in cinemas now.