Cria Cuervos/Dvd, Criterion Collection, DVD

Carlos Saura's exquisite Créía cuervos... heralded a turning point in Spain: Shot while General Franco was on his deathbed, the film melds the personal and the political in a portrait of the legacy of fascism and it's effects on a middle-class family (the title derives from the Spanish proverb: "Raise ravens and they'll peck out your eyes"). Ana Torrent (the dark-eyed beauty from the Spirit of the Beehive) portrays the disturbed eight-year-old Ana, living in Madrid with her two sisters and mourning the death of her mother, whom she conjures as a ghost (played by an ethereal Geraldine Chaplin).