Black Bread

Rural Catalonia after the war. Andreu finds a cart in the woods; there is a man and his son inside, both dead. It does not look like an accident. The gendarmerie investigates and looks for Andreu's father as a suspect; the man was on the losing side in the war and is now in hiding. His mother works and the boy stays with his grandmother. Andreu starts investigating on his own. Everyone in the village knows something and nobody says it. What he learns concerns his father. Agustí Villaronga writes and directs. Francesc Colomer plays Andreu and Nora Navas his mother; Marina Comas and Roger Casamajor are in the cast. It is a Spanish production and the language is Catalan. The source is Emili Teixidor's novel. The film won nine Goyas including best film; it was the first time a film made in Catalan took the best film award. It was submitted as Spain's entry for the Oscar. The matter it treats is the silence after a war; the children of the losing side do not even know what they do not know. The narrative does not build the boy as an innocent witness; as Andreu goes on he changes too. The photography is dark and the forest works inside the narrative as a threat. Its ending is hard and the character's choice is approved nowhere. Its limit is the watching; the subject is heavy, some scenes uncomfortable, and the narrative offers no hope. Who it is for: viewers who like Spanish and Catalan cinema and postwar narratives. Who it is not for: it is bleak, hard, and the ending bitter.