Cria Cuervos

A child stands beside a bed, looking at an adult who is partially covered by a blanket and appears to be screaming. The vintage bedroom features lace curtains, a wooden headboard, and soft natural light.

Carlos Saura's exquisite Cría cuervos . . . heralded a turning point in Spain: shot while General Franco was on his deathbed, the film melds the personal and the political in a portrait of the legacy of fascism and its effects on a middle-class family. (The title derives from the Spanish proverb: “Raise ravens and they’ll peck out your eyes”).

Ana Torrent (the dark-eyed beauty from Victor Erice's The Spirit of the Beehive) portrays the disturbed eight-year-old Ana, living in Madrid with her two sisters and mourning the death of her mother, whom she conjures as a ghost. Seamlessly shifting between fantasy and reality, the film subtly evokes both the complex feelings of childhood and the struggles of a nation emerging from the shadows.

The film will be introduced by Isabel Calderón Reyes, a PhD Candidate in Romance Studies at Cornell University and a Mellon Graduate Fellow with the Society for the Humanities.

Free admission! Sponsored by the Society for the Humanities as part of our "Scale on Screen" film series.

The film screens in a 35mm print courtesy of Janus Films. In Spanish with English subtitles.