General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20267 min read

Cria Cuervos

Cría cuervos (released in English as Cria! or Raise Ravens) is a 1976 Spanish drama film written and directed by Carlos Saura and produced by Elías Querejeta, in which an eight-year-old girl in Madrid, convinced that she poisoned her authoritarian father, lives with her sisters and strict aunt while invoking the ghost of her dead mother¹^•². Shot in 1975 while General Francisco Franco was on his deathbed, it melds family grief with a portrait of the legacy of fascism in a middle-class Spanish household, and it won the Grand Prix Spécial du Jury (ex-aequo) at the 1976 Cannes Film Festival³^•⁴.

Key fact	Detail
Original title / director	Cría cuervos, written and directed by Carlos Saura⁴
Production	Spain, produced in 1975 by Elías Querejeta Producciones Cinematográficas S.L.; Spanish release 26 January 1976⁵^•⁶
Principal cast	Ana Torrent (Ana), Geraldine Chaplin (the mother and the adult Ana), Mónica Randall (aunt Paulina), Héctor Alterio (Anselmo, the father), Florinda Chico (Rosa)³
Cannes 1976	Grand Prix Spécial du Jury, shared with Éric Rohmer's La Marquise d'O; also nominated for the Palme d'Or⁴^•⁷
Music	Federico Mompou, with the pop song "Porque te vas" sung by Jeannette³
Title meaning	From the Spanish proverb "Cría cuervos y te sacarán los ojos": raise ravens and they will peck out your eyes³
Later recognition	Nominated for best foreign film at the César and Golden Globe awards; Spain's submission to the Oscars⁸

Spoilers

Story and structure

The film is set in an old house in central Madrid, where a family of three girls lives with their paralytic grandmother and the household maid, Rosa, who has served the family for years and acts as confidante⁹. The mother, a former pianist, has died after a painful illness; the father, Anselmo, a military officer whom the film shows as adulterous and authoritarian, dies at the start of the story, and the girls pass into the care of their strict, unmarried aunt Paulina⁸^•⁹.

Ana's belief in her own power. The child Ana, spying on her father as he dies in bed with his lover, believes the death was caused by a glass of milk she had laced with what she thought was poison but was in fact sodium perborate. From this she concludes that she holds power over the life and death of those around her, and a second power as well: the ability to summon the presence of her dead mother, with whom she relives a relationship of tenderness and, at times, domination¹⁰. The film shifts seamlessly between fantasy and reality, memory and the present³.

Narration from the future. The story is told in the first person and from the future by an adult Ana, also played by Geraldine Chaplin, who recalls without nostalgia the anguished years of her childhood⁸. Chaplin thus plays two roles, the children's mother and Ana grown up, looking back on her childhood¹¹. The Spanish Film Archive notes the film's alternating flashback structure, jumping between the adult's present and the childhood summer of 1975¹².

Political context

Saura had already used allegorical devices against the Franco regime in earlier films made with screenwriter Rafael Azcona, including El jardín de las delicias (1970), Ana y los lobos (1973), and La prima Angélica (1974), which won the Jury Prize at Cannes two years before⁸. Cría cuervos was his first solo screenplay after nearly a decade of collaboration with Azcona, and it marked a turn toward a more intimate, intellectual tone and toward the female universe⁸. It was also the first film over which Saura exercised complete artistic control, taking triple credit for story, script, and direction¹³.

The film was shot in the summer of 1975, in the dying months of the dictatorship, and released in January 1976, months after Franco's death in November 1975¹¹^•⁶. Critics read the household as an image of the regime: Le Nouvel Observateur called it a spectacle of good Francoist bourgeoisie observed by the child from behind the family scenes, as if through a keyhole¹⁴. Derek Malcolm of the London Evening Standard called it a clear criticism of a regime that stifled the Spanish for decades¹⁵. Saura himself told L'Express that he spoke in his films of what he disliked, naming the Spanish family with its rigidity, its sense of sin, and its education¹⁴.

Reception and awards

At the 29th Cannes festival in May 1976, the jury presided over by Tennessee Williams awarded the Palme d'Or to Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver and gave the second-place Grand Prix Spécial du Jury to Éric Rohmer's La Marquise d'O, shared with Cría cuervos⁸. French critics received the film with enthusiasm; Le Monde placed Saura in the front rank of young European filmmakers, and the film opened in Paris on three screens simultaneously¹⁴.

Reception in Spain. According to Saura, the first Spanish reviews, mostly from leftist critics newly freed from censorship by Franco's death, were "catastrophic"; after the Cannes prize the film became a hit worldwide, including in Spain, where it was the sixth-highest grossing film of 1976¹¹. Producer Elías Querejeta suggested that Spanish media had downplayed the Cannes success, possibly for political reasons, and attributed the missed Palme d'Or to market considerations⁸.

The film was nominated for best foreign film at the French César awards and the Golden Globes, and was chosen to represent Spain at the Oscars without reaching the five nominees⁸. It won the French Syndicate of Cinema Critics' award for best foreign film in 1977 and Premios ACE awards in 1978 for best film, director, actress (Geraldine Chaplin), and supporting actor (Héctor Alterio)⁷. Not all reviews were favorable: Vincent Canby of The New York Times compared it unfavorably with La prima Angélica, and Luis Buñuel, Saura's principal reference, admitted in his memoirs that the film had not interested him much⁸.

Cast and making

Saura cast Ana Torrent as Ana after being fascinated by her performance in Víctor Erice's The Spirit of the Beehive (1973); Torrent later worked with Saura again in Elisa, vida mía (1977) and continued acting into adulthood¹¹. The sisters are played by Conchita Pérez (Irene) and Mayte Sánchez (Maite)³. The crew included cinematographer Teo Escamilla, editor Pablo G. del Amo, and composer Federico Mompou; the recurring pop song "Porque te vas", sung by Jeannette, became closely identified with the film³^•¹⁶.

Sources give the running time differently: the Cannes festival archive lists 105 minutes¹, the Spanish Film Institute catalog 107 minutes⁵, the Criterion Collection 109 minutes³, and Encyclopedia.com 112 minutes¹⁷. Ana's age is likewise given as seven by El País, eight by Criterion and Time Out, and nine by the Cannes synopsis⁸^•³^•¹.

Legacy

The film is regarded as a hinge of Spanish cinema, made with Franco alive and released after his death, and as one of the most popular and highly valued works in Saura's filmography and among the most representative of the first phase of the Spanish transition to democracy¹⁶^•⁸. It has influenced later Spanish filmmakers, among them Juanma Bajo Ulloa, Pilar Palomero, Clara Roquet, and Carlos Vermut¹⁶. Fifty years after its Cannes premiere, a 4K restoration from the original 35 mm negative, produced by Video Mercury Films with FlixOlé, was screened at the 2026 festival in the Cinéma de la Plage section of Cannes Classics¹⁸.

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Coming-of-age films › Coming-of-age films released before 2000

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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