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{es} Viridiana [1] (Spain/Mexic, 1961), directed by Luis Buñuel, starring Silvia Pinal, Francisco Rabal, Fernando Rey.

Viridiana, a young nun about to take her final vows, pays a visit to her widowed uncle at the request of her Mother Superior.

Identifying one Luis Buñuel film as the filmmaker’s greatest work is an impossible task. But this satire, his first to be made in Spain after over two decades spent in Mexico, comes close. Another anticlerical diatribe, it’s a splenetic and hilarious take on the nature of virtue and the hypocrisy of the church. It premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Palme d’Or. But it nearly didn’t make it. The Spanish government not only attempted to ban the film, they also tried to destroy every copy of it. The Vatican also ruled it was blasphemous and ordered its congregation not to see the film. Many did. By 2016, it was voted by national critics as the greatest Spanish film of all time.

<Best Spanish Films>

<Film101, Best Films #135>