The Crime of Cuenca

1913, the village of Osa de la Vega in the province of Cuenca. A shepherd called José María disappears. Three years later two men working on the estate of one of the village's leading figures, Gregorio and León, are accused of murder. The Civil Guard tortures them for days and in the end both confess. No body is ever found. Years later the missing shepherd turns up alive. Pilar Miró's film was made in 1979 but could not be shown for two years. The military jurisdiction seized it and Miró was prosecuted for insulting the Civil Guard, although censorship in Spain had been abolished two years earlier. In 1981 the Supreme Court allowed it to be shown and the film caused enormous argument in the country. Its subject is not a murder but how a confession obtained under torture becomes a court's verdict. Eighty-nine minutes, and the scenes of torture are shown directly.