Ana, an eight-year-old girl living in Madrid with her grandmother and two sisters, mourns the death of her mother.
Acting
Ana Torrent's eyes will haunt your dreams forever.
Direction
Saura turns a child's game into political parable.
Cinematography
Warm Madrid light hiding something deeply wrong.
Director
Carlos Saura
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Ana Torrent was only seven and had never acted; Saura found her in a Madrid school. Her unblinking performance remains one of cinema's greatest child performances.
Made in 1976, just after Franco's death, the film encodes Spain's collective inability to process fascism through one family's repressed grief. The 'raise the dead' game Ana plays was Saura's metaphor for a nation refusing to bury its past.
ES
