Mamántula x Mangosteen

Directed by Ion de Sosa/Tulapop Saenjaroen | 48+40 minutes | 18+ | Australian Premiere

1.30pm, Saturday, 3rd February | Buy Tickets | Buy Passes

Stunning new mid-length horror-adjacent experimental works from two of the most interesting voices in contemporary arthouse cinema, Mamántula and Mangosteen come direct to Australia from the international festival circuit.

Mamántula

Detectives investigate an alluring, seductive man-tarantula, as he terrorises an urban enclave, literally sucking out the essence of its local queer community.

In an alternative present of brutalist saunas and endless metro corridors, each of Mamántula's lovers falls victim to his insatiable lust for blood and semen; a thread in the stellar web he's weaving. A team of trench-coated, hat-wearing detectives set out to investigate, and put a stop to, his trail of carnage, in this pseudo-pilot episode to the world's greatest theoretical police procedural from Ion De Sosa (Androids Dream, cinematographer of The Sacred Spirit.

"The best from Sitges 2023!" - Sabina, Letterboxd

Country: Germany, Spain
Year: 2023
Language: Spanish

Mangosteen

After returning to his hometown to work in his sister’s fruit processing factory, a man pulls out of the family business to dedicate himself to writing an abstract, gory novel.

Lensed with the fuzzy-edged resolution and smeary vibrancy of early-2000s standard-definition video, Tulapop Saenjaroen’s film blends family drama, process documentary, and narratological meditation through the story of a man named Earth, his sister Ink, and their family business, a mangosteen-processing factory. Disagreeing with Ink on the nature of the future, Earth embarks on a project of his own: to investigate the nature of fabulation and the transmutation of the material world into new stories and new images.

"Compellingly, playfully wayward... collaps[es] the boundaries between fiction and documentary while avoiding familiar crossover areas." - Sunil Chauhan, Eye For Film

Country: Thailand
Year: 2023
Language: Thai, German