Land and Freedom

Germany, Spain, Italy, United Kingdom

1995

109 Min

Color

1.66:1

Spanish, English

Currently 3.8/5 Stars.
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PROD Rebecca O'Brien, Gerardo Herrero, Ulrich Felsberg

CAST Ian Hart, Rosana Pastor, Icíar Bollaín, Tom Gilroy, Marc Martínez, Frédéric Pierrot

MUSIC George Fenton

Cannes (In Competition): FIPRESCI Prize, Prize of the Ecumenical Jury, Stockholm (Open Zone), Locarno (Piazza Grande), New York, Toronto, AFI FEST (British Film Showcase)

Synopsis

David Carr has died at an old age and his granddaughter discovers old letters, newspapers and other documents in his room. Persuaded of the necessity of helping the Spanish Republicans in their fight against the fascist Nationalist rebellion, Carr, a young unemployed worker and member of the Communist Party, leaves Liverpool and travels to Spain to join the International Brigades. He crosses the Catalan border and ends up enlisted in a POUM militia on the Aragon front. In this company, as in all POUM militias, men and women — such as the young and enthusiastic Maite — fight together. In the following weeks and months he becomes friends with other foreign volunteers, like the French Bernard, and he falls in love with Blanca, a member of POUM, who is also the ideologue of his group.

After being wounded and recovering in a hospital in Barcelona, he finally joins — in accordance with his original plan and against the opinion of Blanca — the government-backed International Brigades, and he witnesses first-hand the Stalinist propaganda and repression against POUM members and anarchists; he then returns to his old company, only to see them rounded up by a government unit requiring their surrender: in a brief clash Blanca is killed. After her funeral he returns to Great Britain with a red neckerchief full of Spanish earth.

Director

Ken Loach

Unlike virtually all his contemporaries, Ken Loach has never succumbed to the siren call of Hollywood, and it’s virtually impossible to imagine his particular brand of British socialist realism translating well to that context. After studying law at St. Peter’s College, Oxford, he branched out into the theater, performing with a touring repertory company. This led to television, where in alliance with producer ‘Tony Garnett’ he produced a series of docudramas, most notably the devastating “Cathy Come Home” episode of “The Wednesday Play” (1964), whose impact was so massive that it led directly to a change in the homeless laws. He made his feature debut Poor Cow (1967) the following year, and with “Kes”, he produced what is now acclaimed as one of the finest films ever made in Britain. However, the following two decades saw his career in the doldrums with his films poorly distributed (despite the obvious quality of work such as The Gamekeeper (1968) (TV) and Looks and Smiles (1981… read more

Unlike virtually all his contemporaries, Ken Loach has never succumbed to the siren call of Hollywood, and it’s virtually impossible to imagine his particular brand of British socialist realism translating well to that context. After studying law at St. Peter’s College, Oxford, he branched out into the theater, performing with a touring repertory company. This led to television, where in alliance with producer ‘Tony Garnett’ he produced a series of docudramas, most notably the devastating “Cathy Come Home” episode of “The Wednesday Play” (1964), whose impact was so massive that it led directly to a change in the homeless laws. He made his feature debut Poor Cow (1967) the following year, and with “Kes”, he produced what is now acclaimed as one of the finest films ever made in Britain. However, the following two decades saw his career in the doldrums with his films poorly distributed (despite the obvious quality of work such as The Gamekeeper (1968) (TV) and Looks and Smiles (1981)) and his TV work in some cases never broadcast (most notoriously, his documentaries on the 1984 miners’ strike). But he made a spectacular comeback in the 1990s, with a series of award-winning films firmly establishing him in the pantheon of great European directors – his films have always been more popular in mainland Europe than in his native country or the US (where Riff-Raff (1991) was shown with subtitles because of the wide range of dialects) Hidden Agenda (1990) won the Special Jury Prize at the 1990 Cannes Film Festival; Riff-Raff (1991) won the Felix award for Best European Film of 1992; Raining Stones (1993) won the Cannes Special Jury Prize for 1993, and ‘Land and Freedom’ won the FIPRESCI International Critics Prize and the Ecumenical Jury Prize at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival -and was a substantial box-office hit in Spain where it sparked intense debate about its subject matter. This needless to say, was one of the reasons that Loach made the film! —IMDb

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