Our take
There are many ways through which a friendship can form, but sometimes, it’s due to compassion for someone who needs help. Despite the somewhat fantastical clairvoyant premise, Beautiful Beings is mostly about this simple friendship formed with a bullied kid, which turns out not to be so simple at all. From a bummed cigarette, the friendship grows into a protective support system, filling up parental neglect with teaching each other how to live, but while some of these moments are totally wholesome, other moments lean into mischief, and sometimes violent danger. It may be a fairly familiar coming-of-age premise about male friendship, but Berdreymi executes it well, has a compelling cast, and isn’t afraid to go dark when necessary.
Streaming arrival
What it won
Berlin
1 win
The story
A teenage boy, raised by a mother who considers herself psychic, takes a bullied kid into his group of violent misfits. As the group’s troubles escalate toward life-threatening situations, an inner voice awakens in the boy and, with the help of his mother and his new friend, he manages to find his own path.
Elsewhere
"If in terms of narrative there's not much new here, there is a freshness and an inhabited vibrancy that makes this painful coming of age story feel exactly its own."
— Jessica Kiang
Reykjavík, 2000s. With a glass eye and a drug addict mother, fourteen-year-old Balli is incessantly bullied by the rest of the school, until he meets Addi, a boy raised by a clairvoyant mother, and his friends Konni and Siggi.
It can be violent, but it really is important to talk about how extreme bullying can be, especially against those who are at their most vulnerable.
They said that teenagers scare the living… out of me…
The details
Who picked it
Isabella Endrinal is a curator at A Good Movie to Watch. She's now free from the corporate night shift. Previous articles have been published in outlets such as NANG Magazine. She's currently catching up on some classic films… if she isn't coping with the fact that the Haikyu anime will end soon.
