The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo Review

Diego Céspedes’ The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo defies genre and cinematic conventions to paint an empathic portrait of the HIV crisis.

The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo takes place in an early 1980s Chilean mining town. The community exists almost entirely of working/retired miners, as well as one blended, queer family that operates a local cabaret. One of the transgender women in the queer family, known only as Flamingo (Matías Catalá), is raising 11-year-old Lidia (Tamara Cortés), whom she found abandoned outside of the cabaret when she was a baby. 

Lidia has been raised with no sense of bias and, therefore, has a hard time understanding the vitriol the miners are spewing at her family, blaming them for the mysterious “plague” that is spreading through the town. Lidia does not understand why these men are both so fearful and hateful of her family, as her understanding of what this plague is and how it is spread is nonexistent. Flamingo, sick herself, has not explained the illness and the reason it spreads to Lidia, so she is left to her own devices to unearth those answers. 

Flamingo’s clandestine lover is Yovani (Pedro Muñoz), a miner who refuses to be with her despite his proclamations of love. After Yovani violently blames Flamingo when he becomes ill, Lidia begins to comprehend how dire the ramifications of this plague are. When Flamingo’s relationship with Yovani takes a tragic turn, Lidia sets out on a mission fueled by equal parts vengeance and curiosity in order to adapt to her new world. Each person Lidia encounters tells her different stories about this plague’s origins and ways of transmission, the most commonly believed being that it passes through one sick person’s gaze to whoever they lay their eyes on for long enough. 

While Céspedes’ debut feature is a reflection on the ignorance and vitriol spread in the wake of the AIDS epidemic, the story being told through the eyes of Lidia offers an entirely new perspective on this capsule in time. In Lidia’s point of view, devoid of any formal understanding of sex, gender queerness and HIV, the story has a folklore type of whimsy about it. Rather than understanding the black and white of the plague impacting the town, she seeks to grasp on a human level what could have caused such a divide in this otherwise peaceful community. Lidia understands it has to be substantial, but her childlike innocence prevents her from comprehending its depth.

However, Céspedes is still able to effectively convey its depth to his audience through using childlike, absurdist logic that may not be 100% factual in regards to the way HIV transmission was understood back in the 80s, but that isn’t too far from how people genuinely mythologized it. In the film, the retired miners attempt to contain the spread of the plague by guarding the women in Lidia’s queer family; the only catch is that they believe it spreads through the women’s gaze, so the men blindfold the women while they guard them. 

When men in the town see these women earlier in the film, they refuse to make eye contact for the same reason. While Lidia thinks this is strange, the audience understands on a deeper level how dehumanizing it is for this community to refuse to even look at this group of queer, trans women for the fear of infection. The blindfolds and avoided eye contact are meant to show the disconnect and ostracization of this community as a whole and the way in which queer people were willfully ignored and therefore dehumanized during one of the moments in time they most needed people’s humanity. 

The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo being told from Lidia’s perspective also allows Céspedes the freedom to use this film to explore different avenues of storytelling in relation to coming of age, nontraditional family units, gender queerness and love. While it is ultimately a story about the AIDS epidemic, Céspedes seems to want people to understand there is so much more exploration of humanity in these stories that is often overshadowed by the weight of tragedy. 

While the direction of the film finds itself meandering at times and leaving concepts half-baked rather than fully realized, its ambitious mission makes its shortcomings less potent. The film’s beautifully woven tale is further accentuated by knockout performances from its core cast, particularly the effortlessly magnetic Matías Catalá and emotional powerhouse Paula Dinamarca. 

Diego Céspedes’ The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo is unlike anything you’ve ever seen. Its fantastical elements form an alluring gravitational pull to the messages at the film’s core about love, compassion and empathy. For a debut feature, the world of The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo feels entirely lived in and tangible, rooting both the actions and consequences of the film in reality and making their impact largely understood. While the movie has moments of overzealous ambition, its unique way of capturing the audience’s attention is enough to make Céspedes a writer/director to keep an eye out for. 

The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo, winner of the Un Certain Regard Award at Cannes 2025 and Chile’s 2026 Oscar entry for Best International Feature, is currently being screened in select U.S. theaters. Click here for the full list of screenings.