Isle of Flowers

Located between Salamanca and the Portuguese border, in a harsh and mountainous landscape, lie Las Hurdes — a kind of village-from-nowhere, a place where misery and aridity are briefly interrupted by the arrival of a film crew. Luis Buñuel’s third film, based on an ethnographic study by Maurice Legendre and shot just a few years before the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, portrays the traditions and resilience of a people living in an unforgiving land.