Director: Luis Buñuel

Release Year: 1962

Language: Spanish

Starring: Fernando Rey, Francisco Rabal, José Calvo, Margarita Lozano, Silvia Pinal

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Viridiana (Pinal), a naïve nun about to be cloistered, is duty bound to visit her only living relative, her reclusive—and lecherous—uncle Don Jaime (Rey) before she takes her vows. On her last night with him, after dressing her in his long-dead wife’s wedding gown and becoming overwhelmed with lust, Jaime barely restrains himself from raping the girl. After trying to convince her that he has and she cannot join the convent, he is overwhelmed with guilt and hangs himself leaving her half of his estate. Determined to assuage the guilt that she now feels herself, Viridiana turns the grounds into a sanctuary for vagabonds and cripples who end up defiling the place themselves and nearly destroying everything.

Unsurprisingly banned in Franco’s Spain, denounced by the Vatican, and almost destroyed by the authorities, the film nonetheless won the Palme d’Or at the 1961 Cannes Film Festival. Indeed, VIRIDIANA remains one of Buñuel’s most audacious and scathing rebukes of modern society and religious piety and still challenges audiences to this day.