Perched on the Sierra de Guadarrama mountain range overlooking Madrid is the Valle de los Caídos, a colossal memorial site constructed under the Franco regime. Supposedly a symbol of atonement and reconciliation, it has been criticised as an emblem of fascist glorification; it was where Franco was buried until his exhumation in 2019. There are, however, tens of thousands more bodies are trapped inside; in the aftermath of the White Terror, the corpses of those executed under the dictatorship were clandestinely removed from mass graves and deposited in the monument’s crypt. Both thought-provoking and heartwrenching, Manuel Correa’s documentary follows three grieving families and their fight to rescue their loved ones from this horrifying limbo.
