Buñuel And The Labyrinth Of The Turtles

Paris, 1930. The infamous surrealist filmmaker Luis Buñuel is left penniless after the scandalous release of L’Age d’Or. On a whim, Buñuel’s good friend, sculptor Ramón Acín, buys a lottery ticket and promises to devote his winnings to fund Buñuel’s next film. Incredibly, Ramón wins the jackpot, sending the two friends to the remote mountains of their native Spain to film the documentary Las Hurdes: Land Without Bread. Driven by mad artistic impulse and haunted by childhood memories, Buñuel must confront the spectre of mortality looming over the lives of his subjects – and his own.

In the movie Buñuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles what I am trying to do is to portray that young artist, not like the famous director he is today, but as he was at the beginning of his career when hardly anyone knew him, just a guy called Luis. To that end, in order to get close to the character at the personal level, I was very fortunate in that I was able to count on his son, Juan Luis, with whom I held many conversations at his house in Paris, a series of encounters full of details, laughter and affection. – film director Salvador Simó