The Beloved

Featuring arrestingly complex performances from Oscar winner Javier Bardem (TIFF ’07’s No Country For Old Men) and Victoria Luengo (Pedro Almodóvar’s The Room Next Door, TIFF ’24), the latest from Oscar-nominated director Rodrigo Sorogoyen (The Beasts, TIFF ’18’s The Realm) is at once an intriguing depiction of the filmmaking process and an unflinching examination of what happens when dysfunctional family dynamics fuse with artistic hubris.

In a Madrid restaurant, Esteban (Bardem, also at this year’s Festival in The Bunker), a charismatic, world-renowned director, has lunch with Emilia (Luengo), a young actor — and his long-estranged daughter. Esteban offers Emilia a role in his next film, a Sahara-set historical drama about the Sahrawi uprising against their Spanish colonizers. Esteban and Emilia have not seen each other in 13 years and their reunion is tense: when Emilia tries to remind her father of their difficult past, he tells her she remembers it all wrong. Nevertheless, Emilia takes the role, and soon father and daughter are on location, where, surrounded by cast and crew, a kind of emotional showdown unfolds, one rife with cruelty, manipulation, and the reopening of old wounds.

The film, written by Sorogoyen and frequent collaborator Isabel Peña, will inevitably draw comparisons to TIFF ’25’s Sentimental Value. Though it also shares piercing psychological insights and artful filmmaking, The Beloved is a darker portrait of creative control — and it is more brutal.

As in No Country For Old Men, Bardem delivers an unforgettable performance. Luengo matches her co-star with a turn of immense intelligence, mystery, and depth.

ANITA LEE