Cartas desde el Valor. Enfermeras mártires de Astorga
2023 · 24m · España
Genres: biography, drama, historical
Tones: contemplative, dark, tender
Spain, October 1936. Olga, María Pilar and Octavia volunteer for the Red Cross Blood Hospital of Somiedo, Asturias, where they care for soldiers of both sides; when their required service ends they stay so as not to abandon the wounded, and on 27 October 1936 communist militiamen assault the hospital, kill the wounded and take the three nurses prisoner, and after a night of torture they suffer martyrdom on the morning of 28 October.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
This is exactly the kind of reverential historical hagiography that makes me want to scream — three nurses, both sides cared for equally, martyrdom, the whole thing practically beatified before the credits roll. Which means either it's so formally ingenious it transcends its own piety, or it's precisely the consensus-friendly prestige play everyone else will love, and I'll be alone in the dark theater actively resisting it.
A Spanish-language historical drama set in the Spanish Civil War that centers female sacrifice and moral witness — formally situated in a rich lineage of European art cinema addressing trauma and complicity. The restraint required to hold three nurses' final hours without melodrama, and the compositional choices that communicate suffering through what remains *unseen*, suggest a filmmaker who understands cinema's relationship to historical tragedy.
The decision to show the hospital as a space of cross-faction care before the violence arrives is structurally smart, but what actually lifts this is the tonal shift — that turn from *tender* to *dark* hinges on a single choice about when to cut away, and whether that cut is an act of mercy or complicity feels like the entire film's argument.