Joris Ivens’s advocacy documentary for the Republican cause intercuts a besieged Madrid with a nearby village digging an irrigation canal, linking the war to bread, land, and survival. Produced by the writers’ collective Contemporary Historians, edited by Helen van Dongen, scored by Marc Blitzstein, and narrated in its U.S. version by Ernest Hemingway (after an initial Orson Welles track), it blends frontline reportage with persuasion against Franco’s forces and their German–Italian backers.
Prudencio de Pereda
Writer
John Dos Passos
Writer
Archibald Macleish
Writer
Ernest Hemingway
Writer
Joris Ivens
Director, Writer
Lillian Hellman
Writer
Manuel Azaña
Himself (President of Spain)
José Díaz
Himself (Parliamentarian)
Dolores Ibárruri
Herself
Enrique Lister
Himself (Republican Army)
Commander Martinez de Aragón
Himself (Republican Army)
Gustav Regler
Himself (German writer)
Orson Welles
Narrator (voice)
Ernest Hemingway
Narrator (voice)
Jean Renoir
Narrator (voice)
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John Candy: I Like Me78%
Seduced and Abandoned62%
Public Speaking70%
Sherman's March67%
Tricked: The Documentary61%
Audrey71%
Western Stars70%
A Plastic Ocean75%
Looking for Richard68%
Elstree 197661%
In the Realms of the Unreal71%
That's Entertainment!73%
Evil Influencer: The Jodi Hildebrandt Story62%
