A progressive teacher brings new methods to a village in Burgos on the eve of the Spanish Civil War, whilst in present day Catalonia a woman searches for answers as to the whereabouts of her great-grandfather’s remains.
A film full of beautiful moments that puts the history smack bang in our faces and asks us not to look away.
The Teacher Who Promised the Sea 2023
El maestro que prometió el mar
Catalan filmmaker Patricia Font takes us to 1930s Spain by way of real-life educator Antonio Benaiges, assigned to teach in the small village of Bañuelos de Bureba. Intertwined with these flashback sequences are scenes from present day Catalonia and Burgos where Ariadna, the granddaughter of one of Antonio's pupils, seeks to locate ancestral remains at the mass graves of La Pedraja.
Antonio’s leftist leanings and critiques of the new Francoist government anger the more conservative townsfolk, particularly the town mayor. This is despite his daughter being one of the pupils benefiting most from the free expression encouraged by Antonio’s Freinet method teachings. Meanwhile, Ariadna teeters between hope and despair in her search for closure – a human vessel embodying the plight of a nation still wrestling with the consequences of a brutal conflict.
The closing credits remark that the remains of 12,000 people have been exhumed across the country. Like Ariadna, the film attempts to seek answers from the horrors of a war that took place almost a century ago – one driven by political sentiments that feel unsettlingly familiar as some of today’s most powerful nations shift towards fascism. — Matt Bloomfield