Land and Freedom
| Land and Freedom | |
|---|---|
Movie poster from Ken Loach's Land and Freedom
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| Directed by | Ken Loach |
| Produced by | Rebecca O'Brien |
| Written by | Jim Allen |
| Starring | Ian Hart |
| Music by | George Fenton |
| Cinematography | Barry Ackroyd |
| Edited by | Jonathan Morris |
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Production
company |
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| Distributed by | Gramercy Pictures |
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Release date
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6 October 1995 |
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Running time
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109 minutes |
| Country | United Kingdom Spain Germany Italy France |
| Language | English Spanish Catalan |
| Box office | $228,800 |
Land and Freedom (or Tierra y Libertad) is a 1995 film directed by Ken Loach and written by Jim Allen. The film narrates the story of David Carr, an unemployed worker and member of the Communist Party of Great Britain, who decides to fight for the republican side in the Spanish Civil War, an anti-fascist coalition of Socialists, Communists and Anarchists. The film won the FIPRESCI International Critics Prize and the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival.
The film's narrative unfolds in a long flashback. David Carr has died at an old age and his granddaughter discovers old letters, newspapers and other documents in his room: what we see in the film is what he had lived.
Carr, a young unemployed worker and member of the Communist Party, leaves Liverpool and travels to Spain to join the International Brigades. He crosses the Spanish border in Catalonia and coincidentally ends up enlisted in a POUM militia commanded by Lawrence, in the Aragon front. In this company, as in all POUM militias, men and women – such as the young and enthusiastic Maite – fight together. In the following weeks and months he becomes friends with other foreign volunteers, like the French Bernard and the Irish Coogan, and the latter's girlfriend Blanca - with whom David Carr later falls in love - also a member of POUM, and also the ideologue of his group.
After being wounded and recovering in a hospital in Barcelona, he finally joins – in accordance with his original plan and against the opinion of Blanca – the government-backed International Brigades, and he encounters the Stalinist propaganda and repression against POUM members and anarchists; he then returns to his old company, only to see them rounded up by a government unit requiring their surrender: in a brief clash Blanca is killed. After her funeral he returns to Great Britain with a red neckerchief full of Spanish earth.
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Wikipedia