SAN SEBASTIÁN 2026 Special Screenings
Review: Pray for Us
- Daniel Monzón returns to depict a life devoid of freedom, but now from the perspective of a female teenager brutalised by the Catholic-Francoist regime
Daniel Monzón returns to the San Sebastián International Film Festival after The Laws of the Border with another film set in 1970s Spain; but whereas on that occasion, his young characters’ exploits unfolded on the streets, in pool halls or on wasteland, here, the protagonists of Pray for Us are deprived of freedom and endure sheer hell within four cold, narrow walls.
The film, unveiled among the Special Screenings of the 74th edition of the Basque festival, introduces us to Ana (this will, without a doubt, confirm the indisputable talent of Zoe Bonafonte), who is packed off by her devout, hidebound family to a girls’ reformatory run by nuns as terrifying as those in Peter Mullan’s The Magdalene Sisters, headed by a mother superior to whom Adelfa Calvo brings a good helping of malice - a turn that could well earn her a second Goya for such an unpalatable role.
All this for simply wanting to go out dancing and have fun with her friends… and a boy or two. So, at 19, she tries to survive in that prison where she is abused, beaten and forced to scrub floors. Her sole hope is to get out, to escape, especially after she meets Sole (a magnetic Manuela Calle), with whom she forges a friendship that withstands punishments, prayers and commandments, and with her, and a few other companions, she builds a chosen, genuinely empathetic family.
Pray for Us thus slots nicely into a subgenre that fuses the prison film (in Spain, a close example would be Javier Aguirre’s 1978 feature Battered Flesh, and Cell 211 by Monzón himself) with tales of attempts to break out of those cages, thanks to a screenplay that the director wrote with his regular collaborator Jorge Guerricaechevarría. Incidentally, the movie shares its title with a book by Consuelo García del Cid Guerra, a survivor of such atrocities.
Inspired by the real Patronato de Protección a la Mujer, which existed during the Franco dictatorship with the vile aim of "redeeming" any woman who dared to protest, disobey or become pregnant outside of marriage, and which thousands of young people had to endure, this feature not only portrays the abuse, humiliation and degradations meted out with impunity inside, clipping the wings of youngsters who needed to fly high and fly free, but also reflects the oppressive, fascist society that tolerated and encouraged institutions as atrocious as this one.
With a slightly overlong running time – where the escape attempts and the ensuing punishments end up becoming repetitive – and an ending that bears a reasonable resemblance to that of The Children’s Hour by William Wyler, this prison drama from the Majorcan filmmaker would make a neat double bill with Bad Education by Pedro Almodóvar, which likewise denounced how the Catholic Church, in schools and reformatories, closely collaborated with the regime to turn the childhood and youth of many people into a sad, dark and traumatic period of their lives.
Pray for Us was produced by Arcadia in co-production with fellow Spanish outfit Amalur Pictures and French firm Noodles Production. Film Factory is handling its international sales, and Elastica will release it in Spain from 6 November.
(Translated from Spanish)
Photogallery 21/09/2024: San Sebastian 2026 - Ruega por nosotras
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© 2026 Dario Caruso for Cineuropa - @studio.photo.dar, Dario Caruso
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