Cria!

Cría cuervos (1976) is a Spanish psychological drama by Carlos Saura you can watch online on iFILM. Madrid, the final years of the Franco dictatorship. Eight-year-old Ana — played by Ana Torrent — is living in a large, half-empty house with her grandmother and two sisters after her father's sudden death.

Ana believes she killed him. She moves through the house with the calm certainty of someone who has decided something and cannot be argued out of it. Her dead mother, played by Geraldine Chaplin — who also appears as the adult Ana looking back — materialises in the rooms without explanation. Saura never draws the line between memory and reality. What the film captures instead is how grief settles into a child: not as tragedy, but as a quiet fact sitting next to everyday life.

Cría cuervos took the Jury Prize at Cannes in 1976 and has since been recognised as one of the most pointed allegories of life under dictatorship in Spanish cinema. For viewers who want European art cinema with actual emotional weight behind the symbolism, this is the one. Stream Cría cuervos online on iFILM.