Paper Birds

The Spanish Civil War ends and a vaudeville troupe is left with nothing. The musician Jorge, the ventriloquist Enrique and the singer Rocío move from town to town looking for a stage, which is to say for food. On the road an orphan boy called Miguel joins them. Between the winners and the losers they have to change the programme according to whose eye they want to catch. It is Emilio Aragón's first film as a director. Aragón had been known in Spain for years as a television presenter and musician, and he wrote the music for the film himself. The telling shows the world of the stage not as nostalgia but as a method of survival: telling a joke the regime dislikes does not cost you a job, it costs you your freedom. Imanol Arias and Lluís Homar play the leads. The film was made inside Spain's argument about memory after Franco.