The Beasts

"A breathtakingly tense thriller." —Wendy Ide, The Guardian

"A terrific, gripping Western." —Donald Clarke, The Irish Times

Winner of nine Goya Awards including Best Film, and the César Award for Best Foreign Film, this intimate, haunting true-crime drama—part noir thriller, part social realism—is set in a Galician farming village (the “wild west” of Spain), a region that’s as sweepingly idyllic as it is economically depressed.

A bourgeois, expatriate French couple (Marina Foïs and Denis Ménochet), committed to organic farming, settles uneasily among the poor Spanish farmers who’ve struggled for generations to earn a living from this land. They clash over whether to sell their land to foreign interests who’ve offered fast money to develop wind power. Two glowering brothers, characters who seem to have stepped directly from the nastiest scenes in Deliverance, take on the idealistic pair. On the surface there are victims and perpetrators, but the screenplay resists oversimplifying the complex dynamics of gentrification – the privilege of imposing progressive values and the tragedy of fear-turned-to-hate.

Nominated at the Academy Awards for his short film Madre and winner of seven Goya awards including Best Director for The Candidate, Rodrigo Sorogoyen has solidified his reputation as a prominent figure in Spanish cinema. His remarkable achievements have garnered international recognition and established him as one of Spain's best-known directors.

Seating is general admission.

Tickets to these screenings are $12.75 and under. Cinema members pay only $8.

Check out the rest of our New Releases program!