“Mala Bèstia”, interview with director Bàrbara Farré and producer Diego Betancor

Presented in competition at Alice nella Città 2026, Mala Bèstia marks Bàrbara Farré’s feature directorial debut, exploring adolescence through the unsettling language of dark fairy tales and psychological thrillers. Farré and producer Diego Betancor discuss the film’s personal origins, its examination of female identity and the importance of preserving creative freedom in contemporary filmmaking.

At the center of the story is Atenea, a girl at a boarding school who desperately wants to remain a child. When a couple offers her the possibility of a family, she begins to imagine a future shaped by affection and belonging. Yet the fear of losing her place, or being replaced, gradually awakens something darker within her.

Rather than approaching adolescence realistically, Farré turns the anxieties of growing up into a disturbing narrative about bodily transformation, desire, and the need to be accepted.

Mala Bèstia: adolescence as a frightening transformation

For Farré, portraying adolescence as a threatening experience comes directly from her own memories of growing up.
The director recalls the confusion surrounding puberty, menstruation and the emergence of sexuality, particularly the difficulty of understanding these changes without adequate references or conversations.
The film therefore attempts to revisit those formative experiences through fiction. As Betancor observes in the interview, Farré wanted to make the kind of film she would have appreciated as a teenager, something that might have helped her understand the changes in her body and identity.
This personal perspective shapes the film’s unusual approach to coming of age. Growing up is not simply a natural progression towards adulthood, but an experience marked by uncertainty, resistance and the fear of losing control over one’s identity.

Bàrbara Farré on the beast within

The title Mala Bèstia suggests monstrosity, yet Farré rejects the idea that the beast should necessarily be understood as an external threat.
For the director, it represents a darker dimension of human identity that we must acknowledge rather than suppress. “Everybody has got this dark side inside themselves,” Farré explains, suggesting that accepting this hidden part of ourselves can become an essential step towards self-understanding.
This interpretation is closely connected to the film’s portrayal of female adolescence. The girls’ bodies influence how they are classified and treated, exposing the social expectations imposed on young women before they have developed the freedom to define themselves.
Farré is particularly interested in how physical transformation changes society’s perception of girls, often assigning them new roles and responsibilities without considering their emotional readiness.
In Mala Bèstia, the monstrous thus becomes inseparable from the experience of growing up in a world that attempts to determine who a girl should become.

Diego Betancor and the creative freedom behind Mala Bèstia

The film’s distinctive visual and narrative identity also reflects an unusual creative relationship between Farré and Betancor.
The producer, whose previous work includes the Netflix series Élite, first became interested in Farré through her earlier projects. After collaborating on another television series, they decided to develop her first feature together.
Both were determined to protect the director’s artistic vision, even if that meant accepting financial limitations and a more complicated production process.
Betancor describes the project as an opportunity to create an “oasis of creative freedom”, away from the industrial expectations associated with their work in television, advertising and music videos.
The relatively limited budget posed challenges, but it also let them focus on making the film they wanted.
Their collaboration rested on a shared understanding that the project should follow its own narrative and aesthetic principles rather than conform to familiar commercial formulas.

Mala Bèstia and the choice of an independent cinematic voice

For Farré, making her first feature was also a chance to define her relationship with cinema.
Having worked extensively in commercials and music videos, she wanted her debut to express a personal sensibility, with a different rhythm and greater space for poetic expression.
During the conversation, the filmmakers describe their approach as a form of resistance to algorithm-driven storytelling and the growing influence of platforms and artificial intelligence on audiovisual production.
Farré acknowledges that choosing this path can make a film more difficult to finance and distribute. Nevertheless, she considers taking creative risks fundamental to filmmaking.
The director also reflects on the personal transformation that came with completing her first feature. Working on material so closely connected to her own experiences became a process of self-discovery, revealing aspects of her identity that she had not fully recognized before.

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