NCLAFF: La Región Salvaje | The Untamed

Directed by Amat Escalante. Mexico. 2017. 100min. Spanish with English subtitles.

A couple in a troubled marriage locates a meteorite, initiating an encounter with a mysterious creature. Their lives are turned upside down by the discovery of the creature, which is a source of both pleasure and destruction.

Young mother Alejandra is a working housewife, raising two boys with husband Angel in a small city. Her brother Fabian works as a nurse in a local hospital. Their provincial lives are upset with the arrival of the mysterious Veronica. Sex and love can be fragile in certain regions where strong family values, hypocrisy, homophobia, and male chauvinism exist. Veronica convinces them that in the nearby woods, inside an isolated cabin, dwells something not of this world that could be the answer to all of their problems. Something whose force they cannot resist and with whom they must make peace or suffer its wrath.

Director Amat Escalante, born in 1979, is a self-taught filmmaker from Guanajuato, Mexico. He began his work in cinema at the age of 15. After making two short films, he wrote and directed his first feature film, SANGRE, a FIPRESCI Prize winner at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival in the Un Certain Regard category. His second feature, LOS BASTARDOS, was also presented at Cannes.