A documentary about one of the most important films in the history of cinema: Los Olvidados (The Forgotten), directed by Luis Buñuel in 1950 and inscribed on the Memory of the World Register by UNESCO.
Buñuel filmed a movie between reality and fiction, in which his concern for poor children, for the disinherited of Las Hurdes, for the young people of Mexico condemned to poverty and violence with whom he himself, as an exile, felt solidarity.
For the first time, the importance of the painter Goya in the conception of the film is analyzed while the camera returns to the places where it was filmed and we share conversations with researchers and filmmakers who were influenced by this film.
Los Olvidados goes far beyond Italian neorealism to give voice to the disinherited, Buñuel more than telling a story denounces the injustice in which they live.
With this new documentary, Javier Espada shows years of research on the life and work of the filmmaker who went into exile in Mexico to contribute to the History of Cinema with his personal cinema and overcoming the limitations of the industry at the time.
Arturo Ripstein gives his voice in this documentary that recovers the MEMORY OF THE FORGOTTEN.
Director de fotografía
Investigador y cineasta
Escritor e investigador
Periodista
Directora de Filmoteca Española
Presidente Academia Cine Mexicano
Profesora y sobrina de Roberto Cobo
Cineasta
Investigadora
Hijo del director de fotografía
Investigador
Cineasta
Investigador MoMA
Cineasta
Actriz y cineasta
Presidente Academia Cine España
Investigador Fundación Televisa
Escritora
Investigador, profesor
Investigador, profesor
Investigador
Escritor
Investigador, profesor
Director Filmoteca de la UNAM
Escritor
Frailes
Photo taken by Buñuel locating exteriors at the "chicharronería", CDMX.
Photo taken by Buñuel locating exteriors in Nonoalco, CDMX..
The director with journalist Laura Barrera in the Canal 22 studios.
Production: Tolocha Producciones S.L.
Coproduction Spain-Mexico-EEUU: IZ FILMS, MESTIZO LAB, ODESSA, Filmoteca de la UNAM y Luis Buñuel Film Institute
Nacionality: Spain, Mexico and EEUU
Year: May/2025
Genre: historical documentary
Format: 16:9, 2K, DCP
Sound: 5.1
Colour: Colour/Black-white
Duration: 102 minutes
V.O.: Spanish (Fragments in English and French).
Direction, Script and Production:: Javier Espada
Executive Producer Spain: Pedro Piñeiro
Executive Producer Mexico: Izrael Moreno
Executive Producer Mexico: Alex Palma
Co-Executive Producer Mexico: Hugo Villa Smythe
Associate Producers: Emilio R. Barrachina / Eduardo Flores
Actress Ofelia Medina and crew members in CDMX.
Cinematography: Javier Espada, Benito Sierra, Carlos Ballonga, Roberto Flores, Eduardo Flores, Frank Cortés, José Castañón
Edition: Pablo Jofré / Javier Espada
Editing Studio: IZ FILMS
Image Postproduction: Rafael Rivera Goyenechea / Recplay
Sound Design & Mixer: Gerardo Miranda "Jerry"
Audio Supervisor: Martín García "El Oso"
Original Music: Carlo Ayhllón
Post Production Assistance: Miguel A. Tellez
Voice-over: Arturo Ripstein
Recording Studio: Canal 22 México
Recording Engineer: Luis Enrique Bolaño
Artwork photos and still photography: Jorge Fuembuena
Drones: Luis Lupón (España) / Ollin Buendía y Ilan Wagner (México)
With the support and collaboration: Luis Buñuel Film Institute, Hemisphere Films, Canal 22, TV UNAM, Mercury Films, Ayuntamiento de Calanda, Ayuntamiento de Zaragoza, Gobierno de Aragón, Filmoteca Española, Filmoteca UNAM, Zaragoza Film Office, Toccatta, Fundación Televisa, FlixOlé
Researching in the Buñuel Archive, Filmoteca Española, Madrid.
Leather folder in which Buñuel carried the scripts during the shooting of all his films.
Buñuel with his colleagues at MoMA, New York.
Buñuel with his colleagues at MoMA, New York.
Photo taken by Buñuel placing the exteriors in Nonoalco.
Luis Buñuel marked a part of my personal and professional life, as a cinephile, as a researcher and of course as a filmmaker, whose presence has been very recurrent throughout my career.
My personal connection with Los Olvidados began with the creation of the Buñuel Center of Calanda, a project for which I gathered a large number of photographs from many archives, from the personal archives kept by the family to those from various institutions, and among them, those related to this film stood out.
On the occasion of the inclusion of Los Olvidados in UNESCO's Memory of the World, I created an exhibition entitled Los Olvidados Memory of the World, and during the research for it, I discovered a humble shoebox containing nearly a thousand photographs that had never been studied: they were the photos that Luis Buñuel had taken locating the exteriors where he would film his Mexican movies. The first film to be recognized was, precisely, Los Olvidados.
On my first trip to the Cannes Film Festival I was able to attend the screening of Los Olvidados restored by the Filmoteca de la UNAM with a procedure called “wet window”. I would later have the honor of presenting the premiere of the latest restoration of this film in 4K at the Buñuel Theater of this same festival.
To continue researching, bringing to light original materials, talking with filmmaker friends or researchers, to finally share it all with the viewers in a documentary like this one, is a pleasant task to contribute to the knowledge and dissemination of the work of my fellow countryman Luis Buñuel.
Stela Inda with Alfonso Mejía, protagonists of the film.
One of the contributions of this documentary is a new look at Goya's relationship with this film shot by Buñuel in his Mexican exile.
The documentary was filmed in Mexico (including the same places where Buñuel's film was shot, his home and other locations in Mexico City), Spain (Calanda, Zaragoza, Madrid and Las Hurdes) and also in New York, coinciding with the retrospective that the MoMA dedicated to Buñuel's Mexican work, proof of the interest that his work continues to arouse.
Los Olvidados is the Buñuel film that I have seen the most times and the only one that I have seen frame by frame on the moviola, and of which there is also an extensive archive that shows the impact it had on the press, from its initial critical premiere in Mexico to the comments after the triumph at Cannes or its premiere in New York, as well as the original script with Buñuel's annotations and the photographs of the film taken by Luis Márquez.
I would like to thank the production companies that have supported the development of this documentary and the institutions without whose collaboration it would not have been possible: Luis Buñuel Film Institute, Filmoteca de la UNAM, Filmoteca Española, Fundación Televisa and private archives, such as that of Gabriel Figueroa, son of the cameraman, that enrich this work.
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Buñuel talking with writers Julio Cortázar and Carlos Fuentes. In the background is Alejandro Jodorowsky. Mexico.