La Antorcha de los Éxitos: Cifesa (1932-1961)

The amazing story of Cifesa, a mythical film production company founded in Valencia by the Casanova family that managed to dominate the box office during the turbulent times of the Second Spanish Republic, the carnage of the Civil War and the hardships of the long post-war period and Franco's dictatorship — and survive until the sixties, when Spain was timidly beginning to change.

2022-10-05 | es

Històries de Bruguera

The history of Bruguera, the most important comic publisher in Spain between the 1940s and the 1980s. How the characters created by great writers and pencilers became Spanish archetypes and how their strips persist nowadays as a portrait of Spain and its people. The daily life of the creators and the founding family, the Brugueras. The world in which hundreds of vivid colorful paper beings lived and still live, in the memory of millions, in the smile of everyone.

2012-04-20 | es

Spain '68

Spain, 1968. An analysis of the political and social situation of the country, suffocated by the boot of General Franco's tyrannical regime. (Filmed clandestinely in Madrid and Barcelona during the spring of 1968.)

1968-01-01 | es

The First Look

In Spain, a poor country ruined by the recent Civil War (1936-39), and in the midst of Franco's dictatorship, a film school was created in Madrid in 1947, which became, almost unintentionally, a space of freedom and pure experimentation until its closure in 1976.

2024-04-07 | es

El campo para el hombre

"El campo para el hombre" was a politically militant documentary about the small holdings of land in the north of Spain and the large estates in the south of the country. This film portrays the exploitation and misery of the Spanish peasants, but also their class-consciousness and their will to fight for their rights and freedom. The film was shot in the late years of Franco's dictatorship, so it was made in secrecy (the directors were connected to the Spanish Communist Party).

1975-01-01 | es

In the Lost City

The city of Madrid as it appears in the Spanish films of the 1950s. A small tribute to all those who filmed and portrayed Madrid despite the dictatorship, censorship and the critical situation of industry and society.

2009-02-04 | es

Franco on Trial: The Spanish Nuremberg?

Franco on Trial is the new film by Dietmar Post and Lucía Palacios. After the success of Franco's Settlers, their first encounter with Franco's dictatorship, they are now setting their sights on one of the darkest chapters of European history: the presumed organized extermination that took place during the coup, the war, and the subsequent dictatorship led by Franco, as well as Argentina's current effort, by invoking the principle of universal jurisdiction, to prosecute Francoists accused of committing crimes against humanity. The film is also a sore reminder of an issue that still stands today: the clear-cut accountability held by Germany, Italy, and Portugal. The film accomplishes to give both sides a voice - those against whom the killing has been directed; and the side of the perpetrators.

2018-02-20 | en

Estos muros

In the mountains of Madrid, Spain, a railway track on an abandoned bridge and a poem erased from the wall of a ruined building reveal a deliberately silenced story: the system established by Franco's dictatorship after the civil war (1936-39) that allowed hundreds of companies to use thousands of convicted Republicans as slave labor.

2021-10-01 | es

Wild Session

A walk through the golden age of Spanish exploitation cinema, from the sixties to the eighties; a low-budget cinema and great popular acceptance that exploited cinematographic fashions: westerns, horror movies, erotic comedies and thrillers about petty criminals.

2019-12-13 | es

Fallas 37: el arte en guerra

In November 1936, a few months since the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, the government of the Second Republic moves to Valencia. In this situation, several Valencian artists and intellectuals decide to build four fallas — satirical plasterboard sculptures created to be burnt — to mock fascism.

2013-03-02 | es

Bones of Contention

A history of the political and social repression carried out by the ruthless regime of Spanish dictator Francisco Franco between 1936 and 1975 that focuses on the lives of gays and lesbians during those dark years and the death of the Spanish gay poet Federico García Lorca.

2018-03-02 | en

Uncensored Women

The story of a group of actresses who, in the Spain of the seventies, and in the midst of the democratic Transition, decided to appear nude in the films of that time of radical political change, defying the rigid and deeply rooted social rules.

2022-12-21 | es

¿Por qué morir en Madrid?

1966-05-02 | es

Todos los nombres de Sara

Born in Campo de Criptana, a small village in the Spanish region of La Mancha, Sara Montiel (1928-2013) conquered Mexico, Hollywood, and the hearts of people. The recognition of an unparalleled professional career, an intimate dialogue with a tireless worker who took the stage at the age of twelve and never got off. A movie star who seduced millions of viewers around the world, a singer who reinvented a musical genre, a woman who broke the mold…

2019-12-15 | es

The Hidden Battle

During the Second World War, the Allies threaten to attack Spain, an allegedly neutral country, if the Francoist regime keeps allowing Nazi Germany to extract Galician tungsten, a strategic mineral, paramount to the war effort.

2018-09-07 | es

Después de… Primera parte: no se os puede dejar solos

A history of the Spanish Transition told in first person by the main protagonists: on the one hand, the politicians, idealistic or merely opportunistic, who brought it to a successful conclusion in the tribunes and offices; on the other hand, the citizens who, in the streets, supported it sincerely or fought it with ferocity.

1983-11-07 | es

The Silence of Others

The story of the tortuous struggle against the silence of the victims of the dictatorship imposed by General Franco after the victory of the rebel side in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1975). In a democratic country, but still ideologically divided, the survivors seek justice as they organize the so-called “Argentinian lawsuit” and denounce the legally sanctioned pact of oblivion that intends to hide the crimes they were subjects of.

2019-01-25 | es

Marisol: llámame Pepa

A portrait of the actress and singer Pepa Flores, an incarnation of the recent history of Spain, who, in just twenty-five years of intense career, went from being Marisol, child prodigy of the Franco dictatorship, to being one of the first communist militants, icon of the Transition; an idol of the masses who became a discreet person after having claimed her right to remain silent.

2024-05-10 | es

The Most Dangerous Man in Europe: Otto Skorzeny's After War

Waffen-SS officer Otto Skorzeny (1908-75) became famous for his participation in daring military actions during World War II. In 1947 he was judged and imprisoned, but he escaped less than a year later and found a safe haven in Spain, ruled with an iron hand by General Francisco Franco. What did he do during the many years he spent there?

2020-01-29 | es

Del olvido a la memoria. Presas de Franco

Documentary in which ten republican women remember their time in Franco's prisons. “Some put wedges in her nails; my sister-in-law has currents on her fingers and nipples; some have been raped”; “Since they hit first and then ask questions, they hit me.” “Baby, they have given us the death penalty. I told him: but, Virtudes, they will commute you!". These are some of the testimonies of ten Republican women in Franco's prisons that Tomasa Cuevas, a former member of the Communist Party, collected on an old recorder hidden in her bag so that they would not be lost in oblivion.

2007-01-01 | es