Land Without Bread
Land Without Bread
| 01 December 1933 (USA)
Watch Free for 30 Days

Stream thousands of hit movies and TV shows

Start 30-day Free Trial
Land Without Bread Trailers

An exploration —manipulated and staged— of life in Las Hurdes, in the province of Cáceres, in Extremadura, Spain, as it was in 1932. Insalubrity, misery and lack of opportunities provoke the emigration of young people and the solitude of those who remain in the desolation of one of the poorest and least developed Spanish regions at that time. (Silent short, voiced in 1937 and 1996.)

Reviews
Hellen

I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much

View More
Matrixiole

Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

View More
ThedevilChoose

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

View More
Logan

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

View More
Jackson Booth-Millard

From surrealist director Luis Buñuel (Un Chien Andalou, Belle De Jour) comes this serious and extraordinary documentary. In a northern region of Spain called Las Hurdes, not far from Salamanca, are villages in a mountainous area with extreme poverty. The people of these villages, The Hurdanos, are the focus, and their lifestyles are too terrible for words. We see the escalating starvation, a goat fall to its death (the only time they will eat one, the rest live for milk), a baby die, and of course, the rare time to eat bread. These images are devastating to watch, but at the same time you know it is all real, and it makes you realise what charities, e.g. Comic Relief, Oxfam, are trying to stop happening. With narration by Abel Jacquin. Very good!

View More
MisterWhiplash

In a sense, I felt really bad after I saw surrealist Luis Bunuel's third film Land Without Bread (or Las Hurdes), since the imagery and cold, distanced, but un-cannily sympathetic narrative reminded me of the commercials on TV for starving children in Africa and abroad. For a person such as myself seeing this for the first time in this year, when technologies and replenishments are never far from reach, this village pulls at one's heart-strings, and not just in the manipulative Sally Struthers-esque style either. Bunuel uses half an hour to create a historical document with the emotional weight of Resnais Night and Fog, however for a different cause. Though Resnais was making an indictment of society not paying attention at the time to the horrors of the holocaust, and Bunuel is showing day-to-day life in a primitive society, the two films share a quality- these are views of humanity that Government does (or rather did) suppress, and at the least it brought me to an existential catharsis. How is it that people such as the Hurdanos stand to live like this? But that's not to say Land Without Bread is as bleak as a Bergman film being screened for a group of methadone addicts. It is, after all, a Bunuel film, and the sense of surrealism that certainly didn't die down after his great works of art Un Chien Andalou and L'Age D'Or is present. The way he cuts to certain images, however real as can be, take on at times a sub-reality. If one ventures into this film not knowing it was conceived as a filmed document, and is perhaps cynical to believe the stone buildings and desolate, starving, doomed-looking people aren't residents of the area, one could think this is another fictional attempt by Bunuel to take jabs (vicious ones) at the Spanish government (leader Franco, who later changed his policies over the region). It IS real, however, and once it started to dawn on me that the editing and some of the camera moves were a kin to surrealism, though over all these stark, true images, I felt the power of it and of the desperation. Now, seventy-two years after it was current events, Land Without Bread stands not only as a brief history and (as Bunuel considers it) geography lesson, but as an artistic triumph- Bunuel nails the points down and leaves faces and landscapes that etched into one's consciousness. You may feel sad after the film is over, or maybe glad that you're living in the time and place you are now. Any way to look at it, it's a worthwhile film to see.

View More
Dalmas

Some people are celebrating this movie as a fantastic documentary. It's not. As a documentary it would be pretty useless and the people celebrate is as such, hasn't really gotten the point (although they wish they would have).Las Hurdes a hilarious comedy and at the same time an interesting experiment with the nature of film making and it's possibilities to represent reality, as well as distorting it. Las Hurdes is probably the first pseudo-documentary and as such it is both genius and extremely funny, in a bizarre Month Python-way. 8,5/10

View More
j0equ1nn

it's not fair, but people often see humanity divided into us and them. but fair or not fair, i tend to see it that way too. and this film is the closest single piece of art to drawing that dotted line right down the middle. if you don't like it, and most people don't, i don't think i'd be very good friends with you. Bunuel was a fantastic man. i recommend his other films, but i think this is his best. i also recommend his autobiography: My Last Sigh.

View More
Similar Movies to Land Without Bread