27/05/2025 - Ingride Santos makes her feature directorial debut with a film about the struggles of rappers, exploring their neighbourhoods, machismo and the challenges of racial integration

Premiering last March in the official competition at the Málaga Film Festival and screened last week at the 51st edition of the Seattle International Film Festival, Beef marks the feature debut of Catalan filmmaker Ingride Santos. With a background in advertising and production, she has worked with directors such as Elena Trapé and Kike Maíllo (who also produced this film). Santos previously directed the fiction short Beef, produced by Isabel Coixet, which earned her a Goya nomination in 2020.

The script for Beef - written by Santos together with Lluis Segura - introduces Lati, a teenager of African origin living in Barcelona, who finds refuge in rap following the death of her father, a musician. Two years on, she dreams of making it in the world of freestyle battles. However, her strict and tradition-bound mother refuses to accept this ambition, viewing it as both dangerous and vulgar. As a result, Lati begins skipping her dental assistant classes to train in secret with a former rapper, who helps her to confront her limits. In doing so, she discovers that the real battle is not only fought on stage, but also within herself.

Supported by the charisma and magnetic screen presence of its lead actress, non-professional Latifa Drame, selected after a rigorous casting process, the camera in Beef closely follows her through her painful journey of grief, self-discovery and the search for purpose. While its plot may not be particularly original (echoing many popular American commercial classics with stories about overcoming, like Rocky and The Karate Kid), the film is carried by its verve, energy and visual power, in keeping with the urban world it depicts.

Beef immerses the viewer in the peripheral neighbourhoods of Barcelona, not so photogenic and not frequented by tourists. At the same time, it offers a feminist message that highlights solidarity among women, as the central character, with the help of her friends, manages to stand up to machismo, fatphobia and racism in a hyper-masculine universe.

The final part of the film, shot in the capital of Mexico, becomes a fevered portrait of courageous young women facing down a social environment intent on marginalising them and rendering them passive victims of a system intolerant of dissent and rebellion. All of this is underscored by rap and its incendiary lyrics, one of the few art forms that continues to resist the constraints of censorship and, on the contrary, champions creative freedom.

Beef is an original film by Filmin produced by the Spanish companies Sábado Películas and Playtime Movies in association with the Mexican company La Corte. Its sales are managed by Film Factory and it will be distributed in Spain by VerCine.

(Translated from Spanish)