Los olvidados

Los olvidados marks a turning point both in Buñuel’s career and in the history of Latin American cinema. It was the director’s first great masterpiece made in Mexico and opened the path for other filmmakers to pursue artistic cinema there. After the commercial failure of Gran Casino, Buñuel spent two years exploring Mexico City, particularly its poorer districts and orphanages. The resulting neorealist drama about troubled youth shocked Mexican audiences and was withdrawn from cinemas just four days after its premiere. As critic Jerzy Płażewski wrote: “At a time when cinematic moralism was still cautious and polite, one man hurled curses and insults from the screen to warn an inattentive world”. The film returned to Mexican cinemas after its success in Europe, where critics appreciated not only its social truth but also its sophisticated form, blending brutal realism with dreamlike imagery – a direction Buñuel would further develop in his later works.

Piotr Kobus

Luis Buñuel (1900–1983) – Spanish surrealist director and one of the greatest filmmakers in world cinema. Having studied in Madrid, he moved to Paris in 1925, where he made An Andalusian Dog and The Golden Age in collaboration with Salvador Dali. His later creative life was divided between Mexico (Los olvidados, Él), Spain (Viridiana, Tristana), and France (Diary of a Chambermaid, Belle de Jour). Faithfully dealing with subjects such as religion, sex, and death, he consistently attacked ossified conventions and exposed the hypocrisy of bourgeois morality.

16th New Horizons IFF Catalogue

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