Criterion is proud to present Víctor Erice's spellbinding The Spirit of the Beehive (El espíritu de la colmena), widely regarded as the greatest Spanish film of the 1970s. In a small Castilian village in 1940, in the wake of the country's devastating civil war, six-year-old Ana attends a traveling movie show of Frankenstein and becomes possessed by the memory of it. Produced as Franco's long regime was nearing its end, The Spirit of the Beehive is a bewitching portrait of a child's haunted inner life and one of the most visually arresting movies ever made.

Supplements The Footprints of a Spirit, a documentary featuring director Víctor Erice, producer Elías Querejeta, coscreenwriter Ángel Fernández-Santos, and actor Ana Torrent Víctor Erice in Madrid, an interview with the director Interview with film scholar Linda Ehrlich Interview with actor Fernando Fernán Gómez

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