Malaysia has scored a historic first at the Cannes Film Festival with Ananth Subramaniam’s “Bleat!” selected to compete at the Critics’ Week, marking the first time a Malaysian short has been invited to the festival.

“Bleat!,” a co-production between Malaysia, the Philippines and France, tells the story of an elderly Malaysian-Tamil couple who discover their male goat, destined for ceremonial slaughter, is pregnant. The couple faces a spiritual and cultural dilemma: proceed with the ritual or risk divine consequences.

Set within Malaysia’s Tamil minority community, the 15-minute comedy-drama-fantastic hybrid features Tharmasegaran Maniam, Pannerselvam Evarani, and Dhanesh Alagarsu, with “Big Boy” playing the goat at the center of the moral quandary.

The selection represents a milestone for Malaysian cinema, which has seen four features premiere at Cannes previously: “Tiger Stripes” (2023), “The Tiger Factory” (2010), “Karaoke” (2009) and “Kaki Bakar” (The Arsonist) (1995).

“I’ve always had an inescapable feeling about my Malaysian-Tamil culture,...