Annual Top Films Lists

Top 200 Most Anticipated Foreign Films of 2023: #61. Camila Beltrán’s Mi Bestia

Published on January 16, 2023

Mi Bestia

Programmers will want to keep tabs on this new voice in Colombian cinema. A filmmaker who saw her shorts compete in Clermont-Ferrand and Locarno, Camila Beltran‘s Mi Bestia (aka The Day of My Beast) was a winner of the Arte Kino Prize at the Europe-Latin America Co-production Forum at San Sebastián in 2020. Mentioned as a cross between Carrie and The Holy Child, this is co-written with filmmaker Silvina Schnicer and is coined as a coming-of-age film that has monster and disaster film elements. Production took place in the month of June in Bogota with cinematographer Sylvain Verdet in the fold. Grand Huit’s Lionel Massol and Pauline Seigland produced.

Gist: Set in Bogotá in 1996. In the darkness caused by power outages, the townspeople are terrified of the arrival of the antichrist. Thirteen-year-old Ana is deeply tormented by this rumor that secretly invades her daily life, by the existential crises of her school’s priest or by the animistic superstitions of the maiden.

Release Date/Prediction: We think this might wait until the autumn fests with a showing in a section like Giornate degli Autori followed by a major premiere at San Sebastian.

Eric Lavallée

Eric Lavallée is the founder, CEO, editor-in-chief, film journalist and critic at IONCINEMA.com (founded in 2000). Eric is a regular at Sundance, Cannes and TIFF. He has a BFA in Film Studies at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema. In 2013 he served as a Narrative Competition Jury Member at the SXSW Film Festival. He was an associate producer on Mark Jackson's This Teacher (2018 LA Film Festival, 2018 BFI London). In 2022 he served as a New Flesh Comp for Best First Feature at the 2022 Fantasia Intl. Film Festival. Current top films for 2022 include Tár (Todd Field), All That Breathes (Shaunak Sen), Aftersun (Charlotte Wells).