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Most of the events in this debut film occur during the dusk
or deepest dark of a rural Spanish night, where even the
street lights stop working. A young woman is raped and murdered
in a field of sunflowers on the edge of the village.
The Night of the Sunflowers is an ensemble piece with overlapping
narratives that unfold through the morally ambiguous darkness
of a small community threaded with hidden secrets, half
truths and madness.
The likely rapist is revealed to us early on in the film
- by which time various men are paraded before us as possible
guilty parties, and the director's focus is on the potential
for wrongdoing which is shared by all of them. Even the
least expected are spurred on to act immorally by the extremity
of their circumstances.
"An exquisitely performed
mosaic of community breakdown."
Anton Bitel, Film4
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