As if it were a doll game, Bestia, by Chilean director Hugo Covarrubias, was composed in stop motion, (a special animation technique) in order to tell a story with dark nuances.
The filmmaker together with his team created the short (nominated for an Oscar 2022 in the best short film category) with the figure of Íngrid Olderöck as the protagonist. This woman, a former Carabineros officer in the Augusto Pinochet regime, was accused of various crimes and crimes against human rights, including training dogs to rape and torture women, as corroborated by former detainee Beatriz Bataszew through her testimony. .
“Seeing the difficulties of making a series, we decided to make a short film and use Íngrid’s broken psychology to bring her powerful story to life,” explains Covarrubias in an interview with La República.
In Chile, Olderöck has regained a fame that he should never have had, but that over time his victims have decided to nurture so that his crimes are never forgotten. As the director tells it, Beast has served to stir the collective memory. It is enough to see what happens when the protagonist walks through the Venda Sexy (detention and torture center in Santiago), expressionless, cold and without feelings.
“People tend to shy away and avoid these topics. There was a time when this was not talked about in Chile and the new generations did not reflect on what happened. Beast, being an animation, served to reach this audience”, adds the director.
Ingrid Olderock. In stop motion technique. Photo: diffusion
During the course of the short, the viewer gets to know Íngrid Olderöck, her psyche and the relationship she has with her dog. At another point, the fragility of this woman’s mind, about to collapse, is also revealed. “The fact that we show Íngrid as a porcelain figure in Bestia was because she was a woman who never flinched at her crimes and was rigid about what she did. Until the end she denied knowing the place of torture of her and other torturers, “adds Covarrubias.
In Nancy Guzmán’s book, The Woman with the Dogs, which was used as a reference for the making of the short film, Olderöck mentions that her family was a Nazi and that she was raised in a restrictive environment where she was not allowed to speak Spanish or have Chilean friends. .
“For me, his personality traits ended up being an X-ray of a country full of trauma. I set up the script based on the mental images we had of her and the evil of her,” she adds.
In the short there are no dialogues, but the images show, through the dreams of this woman, the spaces where the torturer comes face to face with the victims and also how she breaks before a reality and a system that betrays her. “We cannot justify her, but we can identify that she was trained for what she did. Anyone who was raised like her, a strict Nazi family, can possibly be that evil,” says Covarrubias.
Beast is the Latin quota of the Oscars 2022 and, as the director states, it comes with a plot that leads to reflection and social criticism, unlike the other competitors who talk about love, taxidermy, art and even the Christmas. ❖
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