Chilean filmmaker Diego Céspedes makes a dazzling feature debut with Le Mystérieux regard du flamant rose, a cruel tale following a child raised in a queer cabaret in the middle of the desert during the 1980s AIDS epidemic.
Remember when and how the idea for Le Mystérieux regard du flamant rose was born?
Diego Cespedes: It all started about 7 years ago and even though the script has evolved a lot since then, I would say it was primarily inspired by my own siblings.
How does your writing process unfold? Do you write alone?
I write alone, since my scripts are extremely personal. I don’t look for the perfect structure for the audience but to tell what I want to tell. The characters are entirely fictional, but inspired by people I love. I place them in strange, fictional situations, and I go through these rollercoasters with them. The emotions they experience, I experience with them. That’s why I write alone and keep this process very intimate. I don’t want anyone to tell me how my story should be, because I know it by heart and I know where I want to take it.
I imagine that producers and investors often expect something more structured. Was your film, by ricochet, difficult to finance?
Yes, but fortunately for us, there was strong French involvement from the beginning. After Chile, France was our first gateway. What helped me a lot, I reckon, is that I had already made several short films, two of which had been presented at Cannes where I had already explored some of the themes I develop in Le Mystérieux regard du flamant rose. I moved slowly, with patience.
What made you want to turn to directing one day?
I come from the suburbs of Santiago, a very poor neighborhood. When you come from there, you don’t really have access to culture. I didn’t discover auteur cinema until university, after 18 years. Before that, I only saw American commercial films. I liked them, but I didn’t connect with them emotionally. I remember very well the shock of discovering La Ciénaga by Lucrecia Martel. It was totally different from anything I had seen before. Before that, I rejected this type of cinema, which I found too academic, not for me. This film opened my eyes. I started watching a lot more, and I discovered that cinema was natural to me. I entered school on a scholarship and initially thought I would go into a technical profession because I liked the camera, editing, photography.
What made you switch to directing?
I wrote a first fiction short film, L’Eté du lien électrique, on my own. I showed it to one of my favorite teachers, who told me: “You write very well, Consider direct it.” I followed her advice. I wrote it at 21, shot it at 22. It was selected at Cannes, in the Cinéfondation competition where it won a prize. From then on, I told myself: “Here’s really what I want to do. I have the skills, the energy, the motivation” and I haven’t stopped writing and directing since. I made a second short, Les créatures qui fondent au soleil, also selected at Cannes and I am preparing a third which will conclude this trilogy.
Le Mystérieux regard du flamant rose is seen as a parable about AIDS but without ever being a “topic film”. Why did you want to talk about this epidemic? And how did you manage to make it omnipresent in your film without it being the central theme?
When I was a child, my family ran a hair salon in the suburbs of Santiago where we lived. They worked with homosexuals who all, without exception, died of AIDS. As I grew up, my mother told me these terrible stories about this horrible disease, which I didn’t really understand. I was very afraid of it. And because I lived without real access to information, I remained with my fear, without explanation to free myself from it. This fear dominated my childhood. So when I started writing films, it seemed natural to talk about it, to integrate it as a context, as a reality that surrounds my characters.
And all of this infuses the film’s visual atmosphere which captivates us and doesn’t let go. How did you build it with your director of photography Angello Faccini?
I chose Angello Faccini for his talent of course but also because I was looking for someone who hadn’t shot too much. When you make a first film, many experienced technicians tend to want to tell you what to do. I wanted the opposite: someone open, willing to welcome new ideas, but also to propose them. I discovered Angello because he had just shot the feature film of a Spanish friend Sandra Romero Acevedo. The film hadn’t been released yet, but she showed me some scenes and I immediately wanted to meet him. We got along well, and we decided to function together. And I would say that the visual proposal of the film comes mainly from a memory: these old children’s books, very beautiful, very well composed, but whose stories, seen with our adult eyes, can seem frightening. I imagined Le Mystérieux regard du flamant rose like this: like a tale, but a dark tale.
Le Mystérieux regard du flamant rose. By Diego Cespedes. With Tamara Cortes, Matias Catalan, Paula Dinamarca… Duration: 1h49. Release on February 18, 2026.
