Florinda Chico

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 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 (an ethereal Geraldine Chaplin). 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.

Two Spanish pan-handlers soon find themselves in over their heads when they stumble upon an opportunity to redeem themselves and perhaps the entire planet. The world appears to suffer from rampant poverty, violence and spiritual desperation and the relentless news media force-feeds these images to the Spanish people. A popular reality television show lets the audience decide between life or death for suspected felons, and one of the opportunistic pan-handlers attempts to escape poverty through this raucous and sensational TV program.