Bestia
2021 · 16m · Chile
Directed by Hugo Covarrubias
Genres: animation, drama, horror, thriller
Tones: dark, melancholic, surreal
Inspired by real DINA secret police agent Íngrid Olderöck, the film follows a female torturer during Pinochet's dictatorship through her eerily domestic daily life — baking cakes, walking her dog — while surreal dream sequences expose the violent, fractured psychology of a woman who enacts state terror with chilling calm.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Pinochet-era torturer with a porcelain doll-head fixed to six expressions, banal evil through stop-motion — chilling, deliberate, formally rigorous. Easy yes.
Hugo Covarrubias makes the DINA torturer's face a porcelain doll with six fixed expressions, depicting Pinochet-era violence through domestic banality — Oscar-nominated and one of the most morally serious animated shorts of recent years. Essential.
Sixteen minutes of stop-motion where the protagonist's porcelain doll head, cast in polyurethane and crystal resin, has only six fixed expressions — making evil feel banal and impenetrable while depicting Pinochet-era state violence through domestic routine. The Oscar nomination confirms the formal choice carries the moral weight.
Reviews
Emotions here are betrayed by the twitch of a knife, a violent dream, an envelope crumpled in a hand or a long toke on a cigarette.
It is a testament to the screenplay and visual storytelling by Hugo Covarrubias that the short paints such a vivid portrait of the lasting damage done to a country and its citizens.
Festivals
- Annecy International Animation Festival 2021, Festivals Connexion Award
- Guadalajara International Film Festival 2021, Rigo Mora International Award
- Sundance Film Festival 2022
- SXSW Film Festival 2022, Animated Shorts Award
- Hong Kong International Film Festival 2022, Firebird Award (Short Film)
- Annie Awards 2022, Best Animated Short Subject
- Academy Awards 2022