Goya, 3 de mayo at the European Union Short Film Festival 2022

ByTowne Cinema hosts three matinée presentations of three 80-minute programs of short films from 21 European Union nations, including “Goya, 3 de mayo” by Carlos Saura, plus a special short from Ukraine.

The European Short Film Festival (EUSFF) will be held on May 21, 28 and 29 May at 1 pm at ByTowne Cinema in Ottawa. Spain’s entry for this year’s EUSFF will be the short film Goya, 3 de mayo by Carlos Saura that will be screened on May 28 at 1 pm.

Goya, 3 de mayo

• Directed by Carlos Saura, Spain, 2021, 14 minutes.
• Watch teaser.

Carlos Saura lived as a child the consequences of the Spanish Civil War and for this reason he has approached this work as a means through which to express his rejection of war conflicts. The short film Goya 3 de mayo faithfully reconstructs the scene captured by Goya in his painting. But to reach that final iconic image, Saura proposes the viewer a journey that begins with an immersion in the horror of war through the brutal images captured by Goya in his collection of prints entitled The Disasters of War.

Next, the Spanish filmmaker recreates in two sequences what could have happened in the moments before the executions. In the middle of the night, a car crosses a deserted wasteland on the outskirts of Madrid. It transports the lantern that will illuminate the place chosen for the execution. Under the close surveillance of the French soldiers and their officer, the chain of prisoners arrives. They walk in the mud dressed in rags, threadbare shirts and pants, destroyed shoes… There are some who go barefoot. Some relatives, wives, children, parents, accompany them. The French soldiers are well equipped for the cold and mud, with their greatcoats and boots, and are armed with sabers and rifles. Shouts, lamentations and orders in French are heard from the officer accompanying the soldiers, who sometimes have to break up the retinue that accompanies the prisoners in a bad way. The beating of the drums that accompany the inmates is heard.

In the second sequence, the most relevant French officer indicates the place where the execution will take place. Under his orders, they form the soldiers. To your posts! Ready! On command, the drum roll sounds before the performance.

“Take aim. Fire!” They shoot and those who were shot fall to the muddy ground. After that first execution, they introduce the inmates of the second round of execution. Some cry, others pray, others despair and the last one raises his arms. He has the white shirt. The telluric sound of the drums of Bajo Aragón, universalized by another Aragonese filmmaker Luis Buñuel, helps to underline the impact of that final image: the one that Goya captured on his canvas.