The Stolen Children of Francoism in the First Feature Film of a Promising Spanish Director

“Dos Madres” is inspired by a state scandal that plunged many Spanish families into distress during and after the Franco regime.

Spanish director Víctor Iriarte has made a very successful first feature film, inspired by a state scandal: the implementation from the late 1930s to the 1980s of a system of kidnapping children at birth and placing them in families loyal to the regime, with the aim of distancing them from the supposed political “bad influence” of their mother. Two Mothers will be released in French theaters on July 17, 2024.

Vera (Lola Dueñas) has never given up looking for her son, from whom she was separated on the day he gave birth. Convinced that he is alive, she has since tried everything to find him, but his file has disappeared, and she is faced with the silence of the administration.

She then chooses to go illegal to obtain the information she seeks, and finally manages to find her son, Egoz (Manuel Egozkue), now a young adult, adopted by Cora (Ana Torrent), also a victim of the system. The two women and the boy then take the time to meet again, so that each can heal their wounds and put things back in their place.

With this carefully produced first feature film, Spanish director Víctor Iriarte returns to a state scandal, revealed in 2010 with a documentary, The Stolen Children of Francoismbroadcast in 2010 by Spanish television. Between 1940 and the 1980s, around 300,000 children were stolen in Spain.

This massive operation of baby kidnappings, inspired by the theories of Antonio Vallejo-Nájera, a Francoist psychiatrist, was implemented to distance the children from their Republican mother, to “eradicate” in the newborns “the genes of Marxism”. After Franco’s death, the kidnappings continued, with the same accomplices in hospitals, administrations, and for financial reasons.

Through the fate of one of these women, and that of the adoptive mother of one of these stolen children, Two Mothers explores the feelings of the victims and more broadly questions the issue of filiation, motherhood and identity.

While it starts out as a detective film, imbued with the violence of a mother ready to do anything to find her child and make those who took her son from her pay, Two Mothers moves away from its detective genre to gradually move towards a much more psychological register, centered on the feelings of the three protagonists: a son between his two mothers.

The film explores the bonds that are woven between them like the mending of a past torn to pieces by a state system, motivated by ideological and then financial reasons. These three characters begin a path of recognition, like the revelation of an identity, truncated for each of them by the violence of a corrupt system.

In a chaptered story, Víctor Iriarte skillfully slips in archives (silent, thus accentuating the power of the images). In a production full of ideas and very controlled, this first feature film by a promising director is also served by the two actresses, Lola Dueñas and Ana Torrent, who embody these two maternal and righting figures with great intensity.

Gender : Drama
Director: Victor Iriarte
Actors: Lola Dueñas, Ana Torrent, Manuel Egozkue
Country : Spain
Duration : 1h 49min
Exit : July 17 2024
Distributer : Shellac
Synopsis : Twenty years ago, Vera was separated from her son at birth. Since then, she has searched tirelessly for him, but his file has mysteriously disappeared from the Spanish archives. Twenty years ago, Cora adopted a son, Egoz. Today, destiny brings the three of them together. Together, they will make up for lost time and take revenge on those who stole him from them.