Showing: Luis García Berlanga  
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A distant land shrouded in myth and rumor, America looms large in the cultural imagination of a quiet Castilian village, whose impressionable inhabitants dream of benefitting from the country’s postwar plans to aid Europe.

Luis García Berlanga Spain, 1952

Barrios altos

A divorced single mother enters a world of confusion after her friend leaves her a cryptic message shortly before being murdered.

Luis García Berlanga Spain, 1987

Boyfriend in Sight

The often unruly in-betweenness of adolescence is the subject of this bittersweet comedy from director Luis García Berlanga.

Luis García Berlanga Spain, 1954

Everyone Off to Jail

Luis García Berlanga’s penultimate film is a raucous screwball satire in which a prison in Valencia hosts an event recognizing the political prisoners jailed during Franco’s reign.

Luis García Berlanga Spain, 1993

The Executioner

This masterpiece of black humor, beloved in Spain but too little seen elsewhere, threads a scathing critique of Franco-era values through a macabre farce about an undertaker who marries an executioner’s daughter and reluctantly takes over her father’s job so the family can keep their government-allotted apartment.

Luis García Berlanga Spain, 1963
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Miracles of Thursday

Looking for ways to boost the local economy, leaders in the village of Fuentecilla set their hopes on a medicinal spa that was once a popular destination but has since fallen on hard times.

Luis García Berlanga Spain, 1957

Nacional III

The third installment in Luis García Berlanga’s trilogy about the (mis)fortunes of the once wealthy, now destitute Leguineche family follows the Marquis of Leguineche (Luis Escobar) as he is forced to sell his palace in Madrid and move in with his son.

Luis García Berlanga Spain, 1982

Patrimonio nacional

Luis García Berlanga takes aim at the decadence of the Spanish ruling class in this irreverent ensemble comedy, the second of three popular comedies the director made about the noble Leguineche family.

Luis García Berlanga Spain, 1981

Plácido

Widely considered one of the greatest works of Spanish cinema, this relentlessly paced satire chronicles an ill-advised charity campaign sweeping across a small industrial town on Christmas Eve.

Luis García Berlanga Spain, 1961

The Rocket from Calabuch

In one of Luis García Berlanga’s gentlest comedies, an aging American scientist (Oscar winner Edmund Gwenn) goes incognito, trading in his career as a prominent atomic-bomb expert for a tranquil retirement on the Mediterranean coast.

Luis García Berlanga Italy, 1956