España 1936

Production

The film was directed by Jean-Paul Le Chanois and produced and co-written by Luis Buñuel, about the early days of the Spanish Civil War. It contains much genuine newsreel footage.

It should be noted that although Buñuel made the film in association with the French Communist Party, the film lacks a lot of the overt biases common to political documentaries of this era. Buñuel chronicled this film in his typical style showcasing the inhumanity, death, and destruction of the Spanish Civil War rather than focusing solely on a political message supporting one side or the other. This notable style of Buñuel stands in contrast to other politically based documentaries of the time including Triumph of the Will, The Man with the Movie Camera, Night Mail, and Battleship Potemkin, among others.