The Anarchist´s Wife
During the Spanish Civil War, an idealistic young lawyer combating Franco’s Fascist troops is separated from his wife and children. After losing contact with him, the anarchist’s wife is forced to fend for herself and her children in a hostile environment. Yet she refuses to believe that she will never see her husband again …
 
Over a million people lost their lives in the Spanish Civil War, two million were taken prisoner and half a million expulsed from Spain. Set during these harrowing years between Franco’s putsch and the end of World War II, this is the story of a couple and their undying love. Lawyer Justo Calderón is a glowing Republican who fights Franco both in the trenches and on the radio as the “Voice of the Revolution.” His elegant young wife Manuela is spoiled, non-political, but a loving mother to their daughter Paloma and intensely in love with her husband. The young family undergoes all the horrors of the Civil War, all the pain of betrayal, imprisonment and torture, all the anguish of separation. When Franco’s troops win, Manuela loses all contact with Justo. Alone, without money, she and Paloma struggle to survive. Yet Manuela never gives up believing that she will find Justo again one day. In her tireless search for her husband, she sees a photo in a magazine article on former concentration camp prisoners and becomes convinced that it is Justo. Her search now takes on a new urgency …
This story of undying love in a time of war and suffering is directed by Marie Noëlle, who also wrote the script, and Peter Sehr (German Film Award-winning ‘Kaspar Hauser’; ‘Obsession’, screened at Sundance; Locarno Festival winner ‘Love The Hard Way’). The moving story is heightened by an outstanding cast headed by the luminous Maria Valverde (Goya Award for ‘La Flaqueza del Bolchevique’), the expressive Juan Diego Botto (Goya Award for ‘Vete de mí’) and the young Ivana Baquero from ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’.