Cría Cuervos

A quietly haunting family album “Raise Ravens” follows an upper-class Spanish family, more specifically a young child, during the years following the Spanish Civil War. As the film opens, nine-year-old Ana comes downstairs, awakened by the sounds of her father making love. Behind his closed door, he gasps for breath and dies. Hurriedly leaving his room is Amelia, the wife of his best friend. This is the second death for Ana, her mother, Maria, having died a few years earlier. Maria, however, has not left Ana's imagination and continues in this manner to return to her daughter's side, enabling the young girl to resist the attempts of her friendly but stern aunt Paulina to raise her and her sisters. This film won a special jury prize at the Cannes Film Festival.