Of Love and Hatred

ET in a mining town in the interiors of Chile in the early 1980s, Diego Cespedes' debut feature film La misteriosa mirada del flamenco (The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo) is an affecting portrait of a family and community of transgender women seen through the eyes of its beloved 12-year-old godchild Lidia (Tamara Cortes).

- NAMRATA JOSHI

She is the apple of her guardian/mother Flamenco's (Matias Catalan) eyes, as much an object of the matriarch of the commune, the elderly Mama Boa's (Paula Dinamarca) affection.

Beyond that, the film is also a vital documentation of humanity's early encounters with AIDS and the many myths and misinformation that came to surround the disease back then. Is this plague transmitted through just a simple look exchanged between two gay men or between a gay man and a transgender woman? So, are the lovebirds Flamenco and Yovani (Pedro Munoz) responsible for its spread in the Chilean town? What to make of Boa's own love and marriage then with Clemente (Luis Dubo)? Lidia has to embark on the search for truth and seek vengeance for the injustices heaped on her loved ones in the face of such ungrounded but terrifying assumptions.