Land Without Bread (1933) on Netflix
NR193330mDocumentary
A road reached Las Hurdes, a remote mountain region of Spain, only in 1922. Its people, the Hurdanos, live in poverty and isolation, without electricity, and bread was long unknown to them.
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- Netflix4.3/5
- IMDb7.3/106,757 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes100%
Featurette
Plot summary
Las Hurdes is a poor and isolated region of Spain, in Extremadura. Its people, the Hurdanos, are spread across several dozen villages in the mountains near La Alberca. A road reached the region only in 1922. They have no electricity, and malaria spreads among them. Potatoes and beans form most of their diet, with meat a few days a week and goat only when an animal dies. Bread was unknown to them until recently. Taking in orphan children brings in a government subsidy.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Land Without Bread (1933)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- To get his shots, Luis Buñuel slaughtered at least two animals for Land Without Bread: an ailing donkey was covered in honey so bees would sting it to death on camera, and the crew shot a mountain goat that fell off a cliff.
- Buñuel said his friend Ramón Acín, an anarchist from Huesca, had promised at a Zaragoza cafe to fund a film if he won the lottery; Acín won 100,000 pesetas and gave Buñuel 20,000 to make Land Without Bread, 4,000 of which bought a Fiat.
- Backlash against Land Without Bread's picture of Spain was so great that conservative forces banned it nationwide, officially for "defamation of the good name of the Spanish people". The ban ran from 1933 to 1936.
- The film's production became the subject of Buñuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles, a 2018 Spanish-Dutch animated film based on Fermín Solís's graphic novel, which covers how Buñuel and his crew filmed at Las Hurdes.
