Buг±uel Nel Labirinto Delle Tartarughe May 2026

Luis Buñuel is often remembered as the provocateur of cinema—the man who sliced an eye in Un Chien Andalou and mocked the bourgeoisie. However, Salvador Simó’s animated film, Buñuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles (2019), offers a poignant, grounded look at a man caught between his surrealist ego and the harsh reality of the human condition. By focusing on the 1933 filming of the documentary Las Hurdes: Land Without Bread , Simó explores the friction between artistic obsession and social conscience.

Furthermore, the film delves into Buñuel's inner world through vivid, dreamlike sequences. These hallucinations reveal his anxieties, his strained relationship with his father, and the religious iconography that haunted his entire filmography. These segments remind the viewer that even when Buñuel was looking at the dirt of Las Hurdes, his mind was still drifting through the subconscious. The "turtles"—the roof tiles of the Hurdanos' homes that resemble shells—become a metaphor for a people trapped in a slow-moving, protective, yet suffocating existence. BuГ±uel nel labirinto delle tartarughe

The film begins in Paris, 1930, with Buñuel at a crossroads. Shaken by the scandal of L'Age d'Or and a fallout with Salvador Dalí, he is a filmmaker without a benefactor. His luck changes when his friend, the sculptor Ramón Acín, wins the lottery and keeps a promise to fund Buñuel’s next project. This sets the stage for a journey into Las Hurdes, one of Spain’s most impoverished and desolate regions. The "labyrinth" of the title refers not just to the winding, barren geography of the region, but to the psychological maze Buñuel must navigate as he matures from a shocking surrealist into a filmmaker of substance. Luis Buñuel is often remembered as the provocateur