The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo

1982. Eleven-year-old Lidia lives with her queer family in a Chilean town. As an unknown deadly disease begins to spread, legend has it that it’s transmitted between two men, through a glance, when they fall in love. While people accuse her family, Lidia must find out whether this myth is real.

In the early 1980’s, in the Chilean desert, 11-year-old Lidia grows up with her trans mother Flamingo, in a loving queer family pushed on the edge of an unwelcoming dusty mining town. They are blamed for a mysterious illness that’s starting to spread – said to be passed through a single gaze, when one man falls in love with another. Because of this, Lidia is bullied by the children of her village.

In this modern western, Lidia leads a quest for vengeance. She faces violence, fear and hatred, with family as her only refuge and with love as maybe the real danger. She finds out that contained within every human being, there is the capacity for both love and violence. The debut feature of young Chilean director Diego Céspedes is gentle, funny, passionate and occasionally absurdist, packing, according to Variety magazine,  ‘an enormous emotional punch’.