Santa Sangre () is a 1989 avant-garde surreal horror film directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky and written by Jodorowsky along with Claudio Argento and Roberto Leoni. It stars Axel Jodorowsky, Adán Jodorowsky, Teo Jodorowsky, Brontis Jodorowsky, Blanca Guerra, Thelma Tixou, and Guy Stockwell. An international co-production of Mexico and Italy, the film is set in Mexico, and tells the story of Fenix, a boy who grew up in a circus and his struggle with childhood trauma. It is signed on Empire magazine's 2008 list of the 500 Greatest Movies of All Time. Plot The film starts with a naked figure sitting in a tree in a mental asylum. Nurses come out to him, to try to coax him off of his perch, using a plate of raw fish to persuade him to come down. As the nurses get him to put on some overalls, it is shown that he has a tattoo of a phoenix on his chest. Years ago, Fenix spends his time performing as a "child magician" in a circus run by his father Orgo, the knife-thrower, and his mother Concha, a trapeze artist and aerialist. The circus crew also includes, among others, a tattooed woman, who acts as the object of Orgo's knife-throwing feats, her adopted daughter Alma (a deaf mute mime and tightrope walker whom Fenix is close to), Fenix's dwarf friend Aladin, a pack of clowns and an elephant. Orgo carries on a very public flirtation with the tattooed woman, and their knife-throwing act is heavily sexualized. Concha is also the leader of a religious cult that considers as its patron saint a girl who was raped and had her arms cut off by two brothers. Their church is about to be bulldozed at the behest of the landowner, and the followers make one last stand against the police and the bulldozers. A Roman Catholic Monsignor arrives to attempt to resolve the conflict, but after he enters the temple to inspect it he deems it sacrilege and angrily leaves in disgust, so the demolition is carried out. Fenix leads Concha back to the circus, where she discovers Orgo's affair, but Orgo, being also a hypnotist, puts Concha in a trance and rapes her. The circus elephant dies, much to Fenix's grief, and a public funeral is conducted, in which the elephant is paraded through the city inside a giant casket. The casket is then dropped into