Caimán's Top Spanish Films

Viridiana, a young nun about to take her final vows, pays a visit to her widowed uncle at the request of her Mother Superior.

In 1940, after watching and being traumatized by the movie Frankenstein (1931), a sensitive seven-year-old girl living in a small Spanish village drifts into her own fantasy world.

An undertaker marries an old executioner's daughter and must continue his father-in-law's profession after his retirement, although he doesn't like it.

An ill-advised charity campaign encouraging wealthy citizens to break bread with the less fortunate sweeps across a small industrial Spanish town on Christmas Eve.

José Sirgado is a low-budget filmmaker whose heroin addiction distorts his perspective of the real world. Although he is a depressed and unstable individual, his mood improves when he receives the mysterious films of Pedro, with whom he shares his passion for cinema.

Three men go hunting rabbits during a hot day. Heat and talking about events happened in the past make them angry, until they go totally crazy.

The movie tells a melancholic story of a little girl who is living in a city in the north. She is fascinated by the secrets of the south which seem to be hidden in the personality of her father.

In a small town near Madrid, Paquita and her brother Venancio, both single and with a childish personality, live under the shadow of their bossy older sister, Ignacia, a grumpy old maid.

Madrid, Spain. Eloísa, a self-sacrificing wife and efficient mother, lives in the neighborhood of Maravillas with her husband, a violent policeman; her sanctimonious son, who spends his life studying and praying to atone for the sins of his family; and her two daughters, obsessed with wealth, who hate each other deeply.

This film is a documentary about the poet Leopoldo Panero. His widow and his sons talk about death in general in this special case, and also about their own family problems.

A small town in Spain, October 1955. Isabel, a 35-year-old dreamer who feels like a failure because she is not married yet, becomes the new target of a group of soulless pranksters.

Experimental, cinematic symphony of Granada, José Val del Omar's birthplace.

A short, experimental documentary featuring sculptures by Alonso de Berruguete and Juan de Juni. Shot within the Valladolid National Museum, the film is an excercise in what Val de Omar called "Tactile vision".

This film was reconstructed and completed in 1995 by Javier Codesal for the Filmoteca de Andalucia, from the montage and the sound that Val del Omar had outlined before his death, after having returned to a project abandoned twenty years before with the incorporation of significant additions (above all in the soundtrack). Val del Omar's notes sh...

An exploration —manipulated and staged— of life in Las Hurdes, in the province of Cáceres, in Extremadura, Spain, as it was in 1932. Insalubrity, misery and lack of opportunities provoke the emigration of young people and the solitude of those who remain in the desolation of one of the poorest and least developed Spanish regions at that time.

Filmmaker Victor Erice follows Spanish artist Antonio Lopez in his painstaking attempt to paint the image of a tree.

A small Spanish town, Villar del Río, is alerted to the upcoming visit of American diplomats and its ruling townsmen begin preparations to impress the American visitors, in the hopes of benefiting under the Marshall Plan. Hoping to demonstrate the side of Spanish culture with which the visiting foreign officials would be more familiarized, the C...

As a young woman, Tristana is orphaned and taken under the guardianship of Don Lope, a respected member of the community, who takes advantage of his innocent charge. When Tristana falls in love with artist Horacio, she must learn to be more assertive in order to achieve independence from her nefarious guardian, or her blossoming relationship wit...

The creative and ambitious Carlos, a young Spanish film buff, manages to become a professional camera operator with time and effort, and is also blessed with the love of Ana, which he has longed for; but the outbreak of the Civil War in 1936 changes everything for both of them.

A couple having an affair strike a bicyclist with their car and do not offer aid out of fear of their relationship being exposed.

The relationship between a poacher and his domineering mother in rural Spain is upended when he falls for an escapee from a reform school.

In 60s Extremadura, Paco el Bajo and his relatives work during day in a farmhouse, and silently suffer submission to their masters, who exploit them and treat them almost like animals. Meanwhile, Paco dreams that one day his children will be able to study.

A silent homage to the origins of cinema, recreating the apparent disappearance of a French photographer in the 1920s. Experimental.

Chimes at Midnight is an independently produced European film from director Orson Welles. The film is based on the play Henry IV by William Shakespeare.

In 19th-century Madrid a young man plays roulette. A mysterious character helps him by pointing with his walking stick the next number on which the ball will fall; the protagonist is the only one able to see him. The mysterious man turns out to be the ghost of an archaeologist and asks the young man to defend his niece from a gang of hunchbacks.

Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí present 16 minutes of bizarre, surreal imagery.

A farm family moves into a city maybe at the end of the Spanish Civil War. They move in with the sister of the farmers wife. In the city everything is illegal or immoral or both.

After being dumped by her lover, Pepa finds her life and the lives of those around her spiraling out of control in a deliciously chaotic series of events.

The vicissitudes of Gloria, a neurotic housewife, and her family's peculiar characters.

Director Pedro Almodóvar tells a story of loneliness, intimacy, secrets, infidelity and the difficulty of communication between sexes. Typical of the Spanish director, Almodóvar puts the women are in the middle of the action however it’s a male correlation that arises from the story.

Ana, an eight-year-old girl living in Madrid with her grandmother and two sisters, mourns the death of her mother.

A particular reading of the hard years of famine, repression and censorship after the massacre of the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), through popular culture: songs, newspapers and magazines, movies and newsreels.

All About My Mother / Todo Sobre Mi Madre – Pedro Almodóvar tells the story of a woman searching for the father of her son as she is confronted with her past. This homage to the mother enticed two million Spaniards into the theaters.

A widower finds himself falling for his sister-in-law.

A woman who works as employee in a fashion store has to care for her ill mother. At the same time she falls in love with a bohemian man.

El Cochecito is a 1960 Spanish black comedy film directed by Marco Ferreri. The film is based on Rafael Azcona's novel who co-wrote the script with Ferreri. The film was a huge flop when it was released in Spain, but nowadays is a cult classic. The film had troubles with Spanish censorship, that forced to change and cut the original ending.

Region of Castilla La Vieja, Spain, early 20th century. In Luján, a village ravaged by drought, Juan, a humble farmer who survives with his wife and son, confronts a local loan shark and is imprisoned as a result.

The Iniesta-Galván family is a theatre company that goes from town to town offering its performances. Over the years, its members will have to adapt to changes and make decisions, like that of whether or not to continue performing. One day, unexpectedly, a son that he has fathered on his travels presents himself to Carlos Galván.

An atmospheric essay, which is an alternative version of Count Dracula, a film directed by Jess Franco in 1970; a ghostly narration between fiction and reality.

Teodoro, a Spanish engineer working as a professor in the United States, returns to Spain to enjoy a sabbatical year.

After her husband's sudden death, a young widow leaves her small town to start anew in the big city. On the train, she meets a fortune teller who will fill her in about the life she could've led had she never met her late husband.

An author spends a year and a half filming what happens as a new apartment building is built in a neighborhood of Barcelona.

Es geschah am hellichten Tag is a German black and white film depicting the dramatic story of the search for a children murderer.

When a rogue priest discovers the exact date the Antichrist will be born, he enlists a Death Metal record store clerk and a cheesy TV psychic for an urban spree of gore, sacrilege and twisted humor to prevent the Apocalypse.

Lorenzo is a young man returns to Spain after spending some time in England, where he fell in love with Berta, the daughter of Spanish immigrants. Lorenzo writes several letters to her trying to convey the beauty of the world her parents left behind.

Rodolfo and Petrita each live in separate quarters in dilapidated Madrid, while looking to have a little apartment (or "pisito", in Spanish dialect). Unfortunately their low salaries prevent them from acquiring one. Soon, Rodolfo's co-workers urge him to marry the old and frail Doña Martina, who is the main tenant in the apartment he boards in. ...

This film turns on two basic axes: the inquiry into ways of cinematographic representation and a critical image of official Spain at the time of the Franco dictatorship. “Montage of attractions” and Brechtianism in strong doses. Umbracle is made up of fragments (some are archive footage) that resound rather than progress by unusual links, with d...

When the single middle-aged Luis travels from Barcelona to bury the remains of his mother in the vault of his family in Segovia, he is lodged by his aunt Pilar in her old house where he spent his summer of 1936 with her. He meets his cousin Angelica, who was his first love, living on the first floor with her husband and daughter, and he recalls ...

An unprejudiced portrait of Spanish folklore and a crude analysis in black and white of its intimate relationship with atavism and superstition, with violence and pain, with blood and death; a story of terror, a journey to the most sinister and ancestral Spain; the one that lived far from the most visited tourist destinations, from the economic ...

A young printer's relationship with his girlfriend is in trouble after she accepts another suitor's invitation to the fair. This adaption of a popular operetta aims to please with a simple storyline and goofy slapstick.