Buñuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles 2019

As Luis Buñuel navigates the turbulent aftermath of his groundbreaking debut, L’Age d’Or, a chance encounter with anthropologist Maurice Legendre sets him on a new creative path. Legendre presents Buñuel with an ethnographic study of Spain’s Las Hurdes region, an invitation to chronicle the lives of its inhabitants. With the financial backing of his friend Ramón Acín, who had previously won a life-changing lottery prize, Buñuel assembles a film crew in the picturesque town of La Alberca.

From this humble base, Buñuel leads his team to a monastery-turned-hostel, where they embark on an immersive exploration of the surrounding villages. The rustic, labyrinthine streets between the box-shaped houses evoke a sense of primal simplicity, while Ramón’s astute observation that the jagged roofs resemble the scales on a turtle underscores the region’s rugged beauty. As the crew delves deeper into the daily lives of the villagers, they are struck by the stark poverty and scarcity that characterizes their existence. The abundance of food supplies, in particular, serves as a jarring contrast to the meager living conditions.

The crew’s visit to a local school reveals a more disturbing reality: the majority of the villagers’ income is derived from government payments for taking in orphaned children, leading to a sense of desperation and exploitation among the young. The director himself is moved by the plight of a dying child on the street, whose fate serves as a poignant reminder of the region’s deep-seated struggles.

Despite his documentary ambitions, Buñuel proves unwilling to resist the temptation to stage-manage certain scenes for dramatic effect, much to the chagrin of his crew. In La Alberca, he orchestrates a reenactment of the local tradition of beheading a rooster, while later, he insists on capturing the image of a mountain goat’s fatal tumble down a cliffside – albeit at the cost of sacrificing an actual goat’s life.

Throughout the shoot, Buñuel is haunted by recurring nightmares stemming from his troubled childhood. A particularly vivid dream featuring his mother and the Virgin Mary prompts him to don a nun’s habit, while another vision of a friend from the region as Death serves as inspiration for a funeral scene in which villagers reenact the burial of an infant.

As the project nears completion, Buñuel’s personal demons continue to writhe beneath the surface, fueled by the harsh realities he has witnessed and the creative liberties he has taken. The finished film, a complex tapestry of documentary realism and staged drama, stands as a testament to his innovative spirit and unflinching commitment to capturing the essence of this enigmatic region.

As the tumultuous year of 1933 unfolds, Luis Buñuel finds himself back at the helm in Paris, meticulously fine-tuning his latest cinematic endeavour, Las Hurdes: Tierra Sin Pan. The film’s notes, tucked away at its conclusion, serve as a poignant reminder of the devastating events that had transpired just days prior - the Nationalist coup in Spain, which would ultimately claim the lives of Ramón Acín and his wife, both stalwarts of the Anarchist movement. Despite this sombre backdrop, Buñuel manages to secure the release of his movie within Spain’s borders, though he is forced to omit any reference to Ramón’s involvement, a stark testament to the climate of fear and repression that had taken hold. Years later, however, Buñuel would finally have the opportunity to restore Ramón’s name to its rightful place in the credits, a small but significant act of defiance against the forces of oppression that sought to erase his friend’s legacy from the annals of history.