Navajeros

Directed by Eloy de la Iglesia, this Spanish film is regarded as the founding work of the cine quinqui movement and is based on a real person, the young criminal known as El Jaro. The real El Jaro was born in 1962 into severe poverty, with an alcoholic mother who locked the children in a room while she went out drinking and fed them only bread and chocolate, and a father who eventually abandoned the family. He was sent repeatedly to reform school and escaped fifteen times, and police estimated his gang had thirty one members of whom only five were adults, credited with hundreds of robberies and thefts. In 1979, at sixteen, he was shot dead during a robbery by a neighbor defending a friend, which is to say not by police but by a local resident. The film was made just a year after his death, which is why it was found so sensational. De la Iglesia cast real youths off the street, among them José Luis Manzano in the lead, who became his favored actor. The film's most striking fact lies there: Manzano lived out the same life he portrayed and was found dead of a heroin overdose in 1992, at twenty nine, in the director's own flat. Who it's for: Anyone curious about Spain's transition years and exploitation cinema shot with documentary rawness on the street. Who it's not for: Not for viewers troubled by violence and juvenile crime shown without aestheticizing.