UK Premiere
Las Malas intenciones is an imaginative coming-of-age story with a powerful central performance from Fátima Buntinx as Cayetana, a privileged but lonely nine-year-old living in 1980s Lima during troubled times. While she has every material luxury available, Cayetana’s parents are often absent and she is raised by the household staff. As a result, Cayetana retreats into a fantasy world where she surrounds herself with Peruvian historical heroes. When her parents return from yet another trip abroad, Cayetana learns that her mother is pregnant and becomes convinced that she herself is doomed to die when the baby is born.
The idea for this debut feature film originated in the director’s own experiences: ‘I grew up in Peru in the 1980s, a turbulent decade of social transformations and crises, punctuated by the terrorist attacks of the Shining Path. It is a drama that seems completely aloof in its absurdist tendencies, but is actually deeply rooted in precisely that period of my country’s history.’