The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo, which took part in the Venice Gap-Financing Market in 2022, is a production by Giancarlo Nasi for the Chilean company Quijote Films, Justin Pechberty and Damien Megherbi for the French company Les Valseurs, Jonas Weydemann for the German company Weydemann Bros Films, the Spanish company Iruoin, and Benoît Roland for the Belgium company Wrong Men. It is also supported by ARTE France Cinema. International sales are handled by Charades.
Diego Céspedes debut feature film centres around a couple of siblings and an unknown illness said to be transmitted through a man’s loving gaze.
Variety wrote in its recent review of the film : "Set during the dawn of the AIDS epidemic, Diego Céspedes’ gentle, funny, passionate, and occasionally absurdist debut drama packs an enormous emotional punch.... Whether the love it features on screen is simple or complex, and whether it’s romantic, platonic or maternal, the film lands on tremendously moving moments that stir the soul by scrutinizing the dueling cruelty and tenderness found within its characters. It meets hatred head-on with empathy, forcing it to soften, but without letting its guard down when it comes to the uncompromising need for community in the face of severe injustice. " (Siddhant Adlakha, Variety, 15.05.2025)
In his director's statement for the 2022 Venice Gap-Financing Market, Diego Céspedes wrote" This film speaks to us from our own history through the eyes of a little girl. It questions homosexual love in a hilarious myth to re-humanize characters deleted in a pandemic, characters of luminous, broken, and real gazes. I believe it’s important to eliminate the taboo, the fear, ignorance and make it a contingent theme through an artistic, metaphorical, and poetic perspective, even never mentioning the name “HIV” in specific."
Diego Céspedes (b. 1995) is a Chilean filmmaker.
He studied Film and Television at Universidad de Chile. In 2018, he wrote and directed his first short, The Summer of the Electric Lion, which won the Cinéfondation First Prize at Cannes Film Festival and the Nest First Prize at San Sebastian Film Festival, and also was selected at Sundance, Palm Springs, Biarritz, AFI Fest, among others. His second shortfilm, The Melting Creatures, was premiered in Cannes Critics Week 2022. The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo is his first feature film.
