This film was shown as part of the Spanish Film Festival, and it made it into the theatres afterwards, as the most popular films from the language festivals tend to do. The frame story is a woman looking to find out what happened to her great-grandfather during and after the Spanish Civil War, which takes her to the disinterment of many bodies (on both sides) of people who died during the war, a process that continues today. The film then flashes back to a small village in 1935, and Antoni Benaiges, an idealistic and innovative teacher who takes over the school and introduces new methods (most particularly the Freinet method- a forerunner of whole language?). His teaching and relationship with the children provoke the ire of the local Catholic priest and his supporters in the village. You can pick up most of the plot from the trailer, and you can probably imagine the ending.
It’s a beautiful, sad film and the actor playing the teacher (Enric Auquer) is just lovely. It is based on a true story, and in the closing shots of the film you see real objects that miraculously survived – most particularly a notebook called ‘The Sea, as seen by some children who have never seen it‘ created and handprinted by the children themselves.
My rating: 4.5 stars
The Resident Judge of Port Phillip 