El Señor (Conrado Osorio), the religious leader of an isolated mountain community, comes home one day with a silent blonde boy. Chaining the boy half-naked in an animal pen, he announces that it is the incarnation of Jesus Christ come to enact miracles. There are many problems with that proclamation; the obvious one being that it is the fifth anonymous child with which he has returned home. The other four he found to be demons instead.

Luz: The Flower of Evil (2019) is a striking and memorable film. It is written and directed by Colombian filmmaker Juan Diego Escobar Alzate, with a rich sense of colour and atmosphere. It follows a tightly knit community of farmers – you could imagine they came from anywhere during the past few centuries, but the story reveals it to be at least reasonably close to the present – and their leader, a religious zealot caring for three naive daughters. One of them is his actual daughter, although her mother has died. Goodness knows where he found the other two.

It is clear that El Señor, played passionately by Osorio, is not a well man, and that his religious delusions are threatening the welfare of those around him. It is also clear that his fearful daughters – Uma (Yuri Vargas), Zion (Sharon Guzmán), and Laila (Andrea Esquivel) – are torn between obeying their father and following their growing natural instincts. The locals have also awkwardly noticed the arrival of a fifth messiah running with no promised miracles in sight. It is a brittle and wobbly arrangement that seems likely to collapse at any moment.

Alzate directs his film in vivid, oversaturated colour, enhanced with abstract night scars and dramatic mountainous scenery. It all suggests an uncontrolled religious mania. When paired with the non-realist story progression and a heavy reliance on voice-over, it becomes increasingly abstract and unearthly. Akin to Robert Eggers’ supernatural horror The Witch (2015), it presents devout but misguided religion from within the very beliefs that are harming its worshippers. What might appear supernaturally-inspired events could just as easily be the results of mental illness – and Alzate definitely points more forcefully at the latter.

The three female leads deliver strong performances, crafting a lot of detail and sympathy out of what are quite subservient, reactive characters. Osorio has a magnetic, threatening presence, but that is the nature of his character to dominate. Some key moments of gendered violence make him a deeply repellent character, but his own self-doubt and uncontrolled emotion make him a fascinating one as well.

The film deliberately leads the viewer to tie their own connections, and to form their own relationship with the story. That may make it frustrating for some: Alzate’s general sense of ellipsis tends to leave open holes that he has no intention of filling by himself. It looks and sounds amazing. It feels remarkable. It also unavoidably feels like a first feature. More discipline and focus on story in any future endeavour will likely serve him well.