Amat Escalante | Mexico, 2016, 98 minutes | 8:45pm, Friday 14 July
[The Untamed] puts a distinctive mix of nuanced social observation and seemingly generic fantasy and science-fiction elements to profoundly disquieting ends within its study of the psychic and social anxieties that sexual identity and desire are boundlessly capable of provoking. – Jonathan Murray, Cineaste
Above, a meteorite spins through space; below, Alejandra, Angel and their children live unhappily in Guanajuato. Angel carries out an affair with Alejandra’s brother. Enter Verónica who takes them to a cabin in the woods that harbours an alien creature who feeds off sexual obsession.
Amat Escalante’s (Best Director Cannes 2013) latest provocative masterpiece draws on both a true-life homophobic hatecrime and otherworldly iconography and themes reminiscent of Andrzej Żuławski’s legendary Possession (1981), opening it up to the sky of rural Mexico. An uneasy fable, The Untamed is Escalante’s latest study of Mexico’s social dynamics.
D Amat Escalante S Amat Escalante, and Gibrán Portela P Jaime Romandía, Fernanda de la Peza, Amat Escalante C Manuel Alberto Claro E Fernanda de la Peza, and Jacob Secher Schulsinger
Language: Spanish with English Subtitles
Distribution: Madman DCP
Unrated 18 +
Winner of the Silver Lion for Best Director at the 2016 Venice Film Festival