Movie Review - "Pa negre"

Pa negre (2010) ens demostra—de forma gràfica—la violència de la guerra civil espanyola en l’època la postguerra. In this macabre drama, director Agustí Villaronga shows us Catalonia during the early post-war years. The initial and gripping first seen of the movie shows us the young protagonist, Andreu, as he discovered the bodies of a young friend and his friend’s father after being thrown off the side of a cliff. Andreu’s family pertains to the republicans who lost the war and local officials immediately point to Andreu's father as the guilty party. To combat these accusations, Andreu begins his own investigations into who the possible killer could be. Soon, the lies and secrets of the adult world that surrounds him begin to crumble and he discovers some of the horrors committed by his father during the war. After the uncovering of a particularly disdainful action committed by his father, Andreu cannot reconcile his feelings for his parents’ (apparent) dishonesty and chooses to abandon his life with his family for that of their enemies. Black Bread was Spain’s nomination for Best Foreign Language Film to this year’s Academy Awards. It is truly a beautiful movie that shows the horrors of the immediate postwar, francoist era from the perspective of a child in a chilling fashion.