It could be a beauty-full year for Carlos Caridad-Montero…

German sales company Media Luna is launching onto the international market the 47-year-old Venezuelan film director, scriptwriter and journalist’s dark comedy 3 Beauties.

Caridad-Montero’s satire explores the Venezuelan dream: Beauty, especially of the female kind. The country boasts 600 beauty contests, near two a day, including Miss Tanguita, for under-10s.

Caridad-Montero’s first feature, 3 Beauties turns on a single mother, Perla, hell-bent on turning one of her two daughters into a beauty queen. Meanwhile, she ignores her only son. Her obsession leaves all manner of hostages to fortune when her children grow up.

Satisfying her own frustrations, and teaching her daughters to vomit after meals, Perla lays it down pretty hard: “A plastic flower never withers,” Perla says, when one confronts a breast and butt job. “A Miss has no friends” is another Perla maxim.

Caridad-Montero, now in post on his second feature Beyond Silicon Valley, calls 3 Beauties an unsettling dark comedy.

“The film raises many questions about how healthy it is for society to be so obsessed with this type of ideal of beauty, and how it affects women, especially the ones that use this kind of contest to improve their social status or even as a way out of poverty,” Media Luna’s Mariel Macia said to Variety.

Having a Miss in the family boosts social status and is a form of social climbing, ” Caridad-Montero told CNN.

“The successful participation of Venezuela in beauty contests, has earned this small country the reputation as ‘the land of beautiful women,’ he added.

“It has spread the idea that there is no more beautiful women than Venezuelans. The media have ensured that this vision is rooted in the Venezuelan psyche of 3 Beauties doesn’t seek to be a pamphlet against this obsession but to provoke discussion.”