Cría Cuervos (1976)

 

In the twilight of Francisco Franco's dictatorship, an eight-year-old orphan and her two sisters find shelter in the house of their stern aunt, trying their best to acclimatise to a new reality.

Carlos Saura's film is told through the perspective of a young child (and her older self) and interweaves past, present and future​, but also includes imagined and surreal scenes, albeit staged so masterfully that it all remains stringent and comprehensible and the political implications are apparent; again, Geraldine Chaplin convinces in a double role (as the mother and as the adult child).

Halliwell*: "Elliptical story of childhood and of women trapped in a world dominated by men; it is ever less than watchable, but its meaning, possibly obliquely political, remains obscure."