Los Olvidados

Los Olvidados is the first film of Luis Buñuel’s “Mexican years”, a period corresponding to the Spanish filmmaker’s exile in Mexico. Portraying the daily life of a marginalized youth struck by poverty and violence, the film marks Buñuel’s passage from a surrealist aesthetic to the traditional social realist cinema genre – a transition that coincides with his arrival in Mexico and his witnessing of the country’s social reconfiguration. Exponent of the Golden Age of Mexican Cinema, the film earned Buñuel the Award for Best Director at the Cannes Festival in 1951.