Anna Saura remembers her father, Spanish auteur Carlos Saura

In the vast constellation of world cinema, Carlos Saura shines with a luminance that grows only brighter with time. A rebel in Franco’s Spain, a poet of memory, and a master of choreographed cinema, Saura transformed the language of film using a grammar entirely his own. Yet, behind the towering legend was a man of immense gentleness, curiosity and discipline — qualities that his daughter, producer-director Anna Saura, captures in her upcoming documentary, ‘The Kid in the Photo’.

“It is the first movie that I am directing,” she reveals at the 56th International Film Festival of India (IFFI) in Goa, where she was visiting as part of a Spanish delegation; Spain was the partner country at IFFI this year. “I was always thinking about what to do with this footage. At first, I tried to find another director. But then I realised that nobody is going to tell this story better than me… because I was the one who was there with him.”

Unlike the documentaries made about Saura’s cinema over the years, ‘The Kid in the Photo’ is about the man behind the camera — his habits, his tenderness, his quiet humour and his acceptance of mortality. “It’s the first time that a film shows him not as a director or photographer or painter,” Anna explains. “It’s a portrait of how he really was… especially during the last years when he was conscious that they were the last years of his life.”

The footage is a mosaic of formats and eras — phone videos, professional cameras, her mother’s home recordings of little Anna, photographs Saura himself shot on the sets, and images of Spain through the eyes of its most lyrical observer.

The film is now in its final stages of post-production, preparing to premiere next year. “We would love to release it at a big festival,” Anna says, “and hopefully bring it to India too.”

Carlos Saura, who died in 2023, had a long and affectionate relationship with India — one that culminated in the 2022 Satyajit Ray Lifetime Achievement Award at the IFFI in Goa. For Saura, an admirer of Ray’s humanism and cinematic purity, the honour was deeply meaningful. “He was very happy,” Anna recalls. “He loved India. He came many times. He was even planning to shoot a film in India.” But by 2022, Saura’s health had begun declining due to a lung-related illness. He couldn’t travel, but Anna visited in his place.

“That was my first time in Goa,” she says. “I didn’t expect it to be such a huge festival. The experience at the main festival, the Waves Bazaar… I was very impressed.” She showed her father videos, photographs, and the award ceremony. “We kept the award in his studio. He was very, very happy.”

During the dictatorship of Francisco Franco, Spanish cinema was a battlefield. Luis Bunuel left for Mexico. Luis Garcia Berlanga survived through humour. Antonio Bardem fought open censorship and even landed in jail. But Saura stayed. And he made exactly the films he wanted to make.

“He always said he did the movies he wanted to see,” Anna says. “He had many offers — from advertising, Bollywood too. He could have made a lot of money, but he refused everything because he always wanted creative control.” This artistic stubbornness defined him.

Few director-actor relationships in cinema radiate the intimacy, creativity and mutual trust of Carlos Saura and Geraldine Chaplin. Their collaborations — ‘Ana Y Los Lobos’, ‘Cria Cuervos’, ‘Peppermint Frappe’, ‘Elisa, Vida Mia’ — remain touchstones in European cinema. “I didn’t see how they worked together,” Anna admits, “but they lived together. They had a lot of confidence in each other. I can imagine them working 24/7 — talking about the character, the film, what they wanted to express.”

Anna recently rewatched ‘Peppermint Frappe’, a psychological thriller made by her father in 1967: “I was very impressed. It felt very real. It could have been made today. That’s something I really appreciate in my father’s cinema — his great movies were of their moment, yet they remain completely contemporary.”

Saura’s career forms the great connective tissue in Spanish cinema. He is the bridge between Bunuel’s surrealism and political outrage and Pedro Almodovar’s emotional exuberance and freedom. He brought Bunuel back to Spain — spiritually if not physically. He kept Spanish cinema alive during a time of suffocation. And after Franco, he reinvented himself again with his flamenco trilogy — ‘Carmen,’ ‘Blood Wedding,’ ‘El Amor Brujo’ — followed by ‘Flamenco,’ ‘Iberia,’ ‘Fados,’ and ‘Flamenco, Flamenco,’ establishing himself as the world’s great choreographer of cinema.

As Anna completes her documentary, she reflects on the man the world saw — and the man only she knew. “It’s very personal,” she says, softly.

When ‘The Kid in the Photo’ premieres next year, audiences will witness something rare — a portrait not of Carlos Saura the icon, but Carlos Saura the human being. And in that humanity, perhaps, we will understand the true source of his genius as one of cinema’s greatest storytellers.

— The writer has served on the jury of various film festivals as well as National Film Awards