The Beehive

Directed by Mario Camus

Produced by Ágata Films, TVE

A sprawling, melancholic ensemble portrait of post-Civil War Madrid that contrasts struggling artists with war profiteers, grounded in social observation and existential despair.

As in the novel of the same title from Camilo Jose Cela, "La Colmena" is a sad composition with the stories of many people in the Madrid of 1942, just the postwar of the spanish civil war. The main theme of the film is the contrast between the poets, surviving close to misery under the Franco's regime, and the winners of the war, the emerging class of the people that makes easy money with illegal business.