Luis Buñuel's Palme d'Or winning satire Viridiana was banned by Spanish censors for over a decade and remains a surreal, blasphemous anti-fascist fable. The pious novice Viridiana (Silvia Pinal) is instructed by her Mother Superior to visit her only living relative, an uncle who paid for her education, before taking her final vows. Uncle Don Jaime turns out to be a bit of a lecherous sort and is convinced that young Viridiana is the very image of his deceased wife, her aunt. Add into the mix his loyal servant Ramona, his illegitimate son and a mob of unruly peasants as the whole mess collapses into squalid debauchery that tests the limits of faith and divinity.

Audience note: this film contains a depiction of sexual assault

Described by censors as "a venomous, corrosive movie in terms of its filmmaking craftiness in combining images, reference and musical background,” Viridiana is all that and so much more. Buñuel's (The Exterminating Angel, Belle de jour) ostensible target of the Catholic church is in part a smoke-screen for his vicious criticism of General Franco's fascist regime and the film would be banned in Spain until 1977, two years after Franco's death. The naturalistic, almost social-realist tone of the film's beginning gives way to a slowly building nightmare as madness and corruption creep in, the road to hell paved with good intentions.