Jorge Amat

In july 1936, the civil war began in Spain, and it would last three years. Since then, it has constantly been a subject for fascination and controversy. What could have pushed leftists from all over the world to fight for a cause that their governments rejected? Why did young men leave their work, their family and their country, so they could join a fight that was somehow a rehearsal for World War II? Nearly 40.000 people enlisted to defend their ideals on a foreign territory. Chronicles Of Hope doesn't intend to describe the events of the civil war in a one-tracked political mould; the human dimension is here the center of interest.

Three short stories in the Paris of the 2000s. Characters lead a banal existence that suddenly turns upside down. Like a modern-day Buster Keaton, they are looking for a bit of tranquility and stability in a cynical and absurd world where surviving is a feat and no one is really who they think they are.

After the survey he conducted on the "women of May", Jorge Amat decided to address the male side of the event. Testimonies, memories, reflections, fifty-five years later. Those who appear in this film are first-rate witnesses, very rarely put forward during the conventional commemorations: Jean Pierre Le Dantec, Jean Pierre Duteuil, Jean-Jacques Lebel, Edgar Morin, Henri Weber, Gerard Fromanger, Guy Scarpetta, Alain Jaubert, Tomas Ibanez, Maurice Grimaud, Edouard Balladur, Hervé Hamon, Jacques Tarnero and Marc Levitt.

Famed film director Luis Bunuel (1900-1983) is the subject of this French documentary, with anecdotal interviews edited thematically into sections highlighting Bunuel's contradictions --"Surrealist and Moralist," "Iconoclast and Traditionalist," "Sadist and Sentimentalist."