Raise Ravens
Late one night Ana (Ana Torrent), a melancholic 8 year-old girl, sees a woman leaving the dark and oppressive family home after overhearing her father die in the next room.
Ana merges the real and the imaginary as she scrutinises her bourgeois family after her father’s death, a philandering army officer, and her mother (Geraldine Chaplin), whom he has destroyed. This film brilliantly captures the thoughts and feelings of a young girl and her family as they go through turbulent times amid the backdrop of the Franco regime. Torrent has produced two of the very best child performances put on film: first in Víctor Erice’s ‘Spirit of the Beehive’ (1973), and then in this film, three years later.