Manticore

Manticore (2022)

Mantícora

Julián is a successful video-game designer whose life is plagued by a dark secret. But when Diana pops up in his life, the man will feel as though a chance at happiness is within his grasp.

Date of release
2022-12-09
TMDB
6.8 / 10 (63)
Runtime
1h 56m
Genres
Drama, Thriller
Director
Carlos Vermut

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Awards: 0 · Nominations: 4

Manticore is 2022 psychological drama thriller film written and directed by Carlos Vermut, and starring Nacho Sánchez and Zoe Stein. An international co-production between Spain and Estonia that blends elements of mumblecore with tragedy and deals with its protagonist's hamartia, the film's storyline follows the romantic relationship between a video game designer (Sánchez) and an art history student (Stein), with the former hoping to find happiness with the latter and thus to subdue his recently awakened pedophilic impulses.

Production

The screenplay was penned by Vermut, in part as an adaptation of classic werewolf films on the premise that they originally sought to depict "humans managing forbidden sexual desires", with motivation for the project coming from approaching the theme of pedophilia as a curse and portraying how a pedophile may try to "cheat" on those forbidden impulses with proxies such as VR or a look-alike of a child.

Vermut stated that "I think it is my film with the highest levels of discomfort. I like to confront the things that scare me through film. And I guess looking Julián in the eye is a way of dealing with it".

Some references in the film are to Francisco de Goya's Black Paintings, as well as to Alfonso Ponce de León, somewhat alluding to the tragedy awaiting the protagonist.

Alana Mejía González debuted as cinematographer for the first time in a feature film.

The film was produced by Aquí y Allí Films, BTeam Prods, Magnética Films, Punto Nemo AIE, and Estonia's 34-T Cinema, with additional participation of TV3, RTVE, and Movistar Plus+.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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