date festival
Poster of the Festival

TRIBUTES AND RETROSPECTIVES

Ken Loach


Land and Freedom



Ken Loach
1995 - United Kingdom / Spain / Germany - 1h49

Screenings : wednesday 24 - 2:00 pm - 400 Coups - 5 saturday 27 - 7:45 pm - 400 Coups - 5
In the spring of 1936, David, a disillusioned young unemployed man from Liverpool, feels he has no future in England. On a whim, he decides to travel to Spain to join the Republican forces fighting against Franco's troops. Incorporated into a clandestine section fighting in Aragon, David immediately falls under the spell of the beautiful Blanca.
“What is a just war, i.e. an anti-fascist war? This question, which is the subject of every good philosophy paper, is being asked today in the light of the countries of Eastern Europe, but also of the countries of the southern Mediterranean, and also, and also... in the light of Ireland, which appears, discreetly no doubt, but nonetheless, in Kenneth Loach's film on the Spanish Civil War. Loach deserves credit for having grasped the subject head-on.
Land and Freedom is a (civil) war film that never changes sides, and the right side is that of resistance to the far right. To its credit, then, it has resurrected a history in which the completely forgotten acronyms not only of the Spanish Communist Party, but above all of POUM and the CNT, Trotskyists and anarchists, resound. The film should now hang on the same historical coatrack as Picasso's Guernica, George Orwell's books, Malraux's L'Espoir and, whether it is faked or not, Capa's famous photo.” (Elisabeth Lebovici, Libération)
CAST AND CREW


Cast : Ian Hart, Rosana Pastor, Icíar Bollaín, Tom Gilroy, Marc Martínez, Frédéric Pierrot
Screenplay : Jim Allen
Cinematography : Barry Ackroyd
Editing : Jonathan Morris
Music : George Fenton

Production : Parallax Pictures, Messidor Films, Road Movies Dritte Produktionen

French distributor : Diaphana