BLACK BREAD (PA NEGRE) begins as it is to continue: in violence, turmoil and the loss of life. The opening sequence, in which a man is bludgeoned to death with a rock as his young son looks on, and a horse is slaughtered before it falls dead with its youthful human cargo, sets the scene for what is to be harrowing viewing. As the camera follows the young Andreu to the final destination of the crashing chariot, leaving no small victim – from the blood-bathed horse to the smallest chaffinch – unremembered, one senses that this, though perhaps not the beginning, is by no means the end of his terrible journey.

… Agustí Villaronga’s gripping tale charts Andreu’s premature plummet from childhood into the horrors of betrayal and war …

Set in the rugged countryside of war-torn Catalonia, Agustí Villaronga’s gripping tale charts Andreu’s premature plummet from childhood into the horrors of betrayal and war. As the sole witness of the tragic crash, the authorities’ questioning soon reveals that they intend to lay the blame on Andreu’s idealistic rebel father, so the boy sets out to discover the real culprit of the deaths. When his father is forced to go into hiding and Andreu moves in with his grandmother and cousins, he follows the legend of the winged Pitorliua, befriending along the way his precocious cousin Nuria and a fanciful tuberculosis-torn youth, and begins a tumbling retreat into the tangled past of those he loves and thought he knew. He encounters the rich and powerful Manubens, who can offer him a future, an education, and the chance to realise his dream of one day becoming a doctor, but this does not come without a price.

… despite what his father says, ideals do not always correlate with actions …

Though the colour of bread reflects the rich and the poor, and demarcates political allegiance through affluence, other matters are not so black and white. Andreu is forced to learn that sexuality is not always a matter of love and fidelity, that guilt is not always a case of victim and crime. He is thrust into the knowledge that, despite what his father says, ideals do not always correlate with actions. Most of all, however, he understands that sometimes we have to make a choice, and follow it to the grave.

BLACK BREAD screens again at 8:30 pm on Saturday 22nd September.

httpvh://youtu.be/mn_gJ5Aly6c