FROM DIRECTOR ALEX GARCIA MALLARINI
LOGLINE:
They say every soul must return—but what if true freedom is never returning at all?
Run Time: 110 minutes
Genre: Black Comedy / Romance / Fantasy
Language: English
Estimated Budget: €3 Million
Status: In development
SYNOPSIS
SYNOPSIS
The afterlife isn’t an escape - it’s a system. At Serenity Springs, souls are promised luxury before their inevitable reincarnation. There is no choice. No second chances. Just an endless cycle of return.
Oscar, a quiet, reluctant soul, wants to find a way out but feels trapped—until he meets Ada, a sharp-witted woman searching for the sister she lost. Her refusal to accept their endless reincarnation situation sparks something in him, and together they begin to unravel the cracks beneath Serenity Springs’ polished facade.
Their search leads them beyond the resort, to a hidden refuge where souls are given a choice. But as they go deeper, the more dangerous their journey becomes.
With time running out and the system closing in, Oscar and Ada must confront an impossible question: Can fate be rewritten, or are they just another story trapped in an endless loop?
TONE
The tone of the film is a razor-sharp blend of dark absurdism, satire and deadpan humour balanced with the intoxicating decadence of the environment. It crafts an atmosphere that is both eerily composed and unpredictably volatile, where every interaction feels slightly off, simmering with suppressed tension.
The use of awkward silences, hyper-controlled framing, and sudden bursts of unsettling intimacy heighten that discomfort, making even the most mundane exchanges feel uneasy. It’s a world that appears structured and pristine on the surface but rots beneath—a tonal dance between seductive allure and impending doom.
COMPS / references
DIRECTOR STATEMENT
Growing up, I watched my father wrestle with fears he rarely spoke of — fears born from a childhood he tried to forget. He was a man driven by obligation, haunted by what might’ve been. I didn’t know it then, but I was witnessing the emotional scaffolding of a man who never fully got to be himself.
That memory stayed with me. And as I grew older and began peeling back my own layers I found myself asking about purpose, identity, and the echoes of our choices. How our actions mirror our inner conflicts, and the effects they have on both ourselves and the world around us. These are the questions Bearded Tooth is built on.
Oscar, the film’s protagonist, is very much a reflection of my father — a man burdened by unfulfilled dreams and the masks he wore to function in a world that never really saw him. Oscar doesn’t shout for attention. He lingers. He questions. He retreats. But in his silence, there is a quiet desperation to belong. This character is a vessel through which I explore how societal pressures and internal struggles shape who we could become.
My personal journey is woven into this film as well. My parents made immense sacrifices to send me to a private school growing up, an environment where I always felt I needed to conform — I learned to shrink myself to fit in, often letting my self-worth diminish, my voice silenced. This film is, in many ways, my rebellion against that silence.
At its surface, Bearded Tooth is surreal, darkly funny, and wildly imaginative — a bureaucratic afterlife disguised as a luxury wellness retreat. But beneath the satire lives something raw: a meditation on identity, conformity, and the quiet tragedy of suppressing who you really are.
We live in a world obsessed with reinvention — with branding ourselves, optimizing our existence and curating perfection. We’re constantly told we can be anyone. But what if we’re running from the one person we were always meant to be?
That’s the paradox this film sits in — the tension between who we present and who we are; the pressure to perform and the cost of that performance. It explores the absurdity of modern social values, the cycles of conformity, the loss of identity, pressures to achieve, the illusion of freedom and the search for love — all through a surreal lens that blends tragedy with absurdity.
Tonally, this film walks the same tightrope as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The End of the F****g World, or Poor Things— deeply emotional narratives that play with genre, magical realism, and existential questioning. But what sets Bearded Tooth apart is its emotional intimacy. The absurd is never played for just laughs. It’s always tethered to pain, longing, or revelation.
Why This Film? We’re living in an identity crisis — globally and individually. Everyone’s trying to “heal,” to “optimize,” to reinvent, to escape the systems that made them. But healing isn’t linear. Reinvention isn’t always honest. And sometimes, in the pursuit of freedom, we create new prisons.
Bearded Tooth is a story about waking up. Not in the spiritual sense. But in the human sense. It’s about shedding the narratives we've inherited and choosing, consciously, who we want to be — and finding someone willing to do that with you.
At its heart, this film is a love story. Not just between two people, but between a person and their most truthful self.
That’s the kind of story I want to tell. And that’s why I need to make this my first feature.
Alex Garcia Mallarini, 2025
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