FOREVER YOUR MATERNAL ANIMAL (SIEMPRE SOY TU ANIMAL MATERNO) Discovery

Screening to be followed by a conversation with director and screenwriter Valentina Maurel.

Winner of the 2026 Cannes Un Certain Regard Best Actress Awards for the tempestuous performances of its three leads (Marina De Tavira, Daniela Marín Navarro and Mariangel Villegas), Valentina Maurel’s lyrical sophomore feature traces the knotty threads of an unraveling Costa Rican family. Maurel situates the audience inside the slippery tumult of this estranged family’s hurt and care, where each character seeks a certain distance from the others, yet the subterranean hold they have on one another is palpable, painful even. Two college-aged daughters, neither of whom are currently in college, struggle for crumbs of attention from their divorced parents – an aloof father who is dating one of their former classmates and a mother who is a lapsed poet attempting to rekindle her creative spark. The elder daughter is fixated on keeping the former family home in order, even as her own life falls apart, while her younger sister is more attuned to supernatural visitations than the humdrum practicalities of daily living. To bring this feisty, eclectic family to life, Maurel reunites with Navarro and Reinaldo Amien, the stars of her critically acclaimed debut, I HAVE ELECTRIC DREAMS (Costa Rica’s 2023 Academy Award® submission), who once again play father and daughter. De Tavira (ROMA, AFI FEST 2018) and Villegas portray the mother and younger sister, rounding out the cast in this beautiful, raw and empathetic drama about troubled but loving kinship. –Travis Weedon