Buñuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles

Paris, 1930: Luis Buñuel is a young aspiring film director who experiments with Surrealism, a new art movement at that time. His current film “L’Age d’Or” has just been released in the cinemas – but the film, which many years later will become a classic of Surrealism, causes a scandal and is rejected by the public. Buñuel’s career appears to be ruined, his donors back out, and nightmares begin to plague him. How will he ever be able to realise his next film project, “Las Hurdes”, a documentary about one of Spain’s poorest regions? Only the lottery win by his long-time friend, the artist Ramón Acin, brings a turning point. Acin takes the risk of supporting Buñuel’s film as a producer and travels with him to the bitterly impoverished region of Las Hurdes. Buñuel is delighted about the “raw material” available to him there and pours himself into the work. But the abject, harsh reality he desperately wants to film there proves to be not only a crucial test for the shooting of the film, but also for the friendship between Buñuel and Acin.
Director Salvador Simó impressively recounts this episode from Luis Buñuel’s life. The interwoven footage from Buñuel’s 1933 documentary film “Las Hurdes: Tierra sin Pan” adds vivid yet often oppressive elements of realism to the animation.
Salvador Simó was already a guest last year at Fantoche, providing impressions from his film in the “Coming soon” programme. This year, “Buñuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles” has already garnered nominations for the Quirino Awards as well as at the Miami Film Festival. Composer Arturo Cardelús was honoured twice with the award for Best Film Score: at the Málaga Spanish Film Festival and in Annecy, where producer Manuel Cristóbal won the Jury Award.