Please note: This was screened in July 2025
Carlos Saura’s début feature film, Los golfos, tells the story of a teenage gang: Julián, Ramon, Juan, El Chato, Paco and Manolo, living in the outskirts of Madrid. Juan has ambitions to be a bullfighter and in order to finance this dream the gang plan to execute a heist.
With a distinctive style, Saura makes brilliant use of his non-professional actors and the striking locations of Madrid’s streets, dance halls, markets and back alleys. Throughout, Los golfos presents an urgent picture of a society built upon the impossibility of social mobility. Inspired by Italian neo-realism and the work of Luis Buñuel, and initially hampered by the intervention of General Franco’s censors on its first release, Saura has referred to his as ‘the most difficult film of his career’. This restoration, carried out by Filmoteca Española, is presented in a version that is the most faithful to the one that Saura premièred at Cannes in 1960 and presented to the Spanish Censorship Board before all the subsequent modifications required for release in Spain were implemented.
A new 4K restoration by production company Video Mercury Films c/o Janus Films selected by Andy Willis, co-curator of ¡Viva! Spanish and Latin American Festival.
