Superbly acted by a cast that seamlessly mixes pros and amateurs, this honest, angry epic is a heartbreaking salute to the spirit of resistance.

An unsuccessful attempt.

Land and Freedom has already provoked great interest and widespread political discussion in Spain and Britain, and it will no doubt do the same wherever it is shown. It merits the widest possible audience.

“David” (Ian Hart) is stuck in Liverpool in the late 1930s with little by way of prospects, so he decides to go and fight for the International Brigade during the Spanish Civil War. He readily makes friends and is soon joined up with POUM, a collection of Marxists where he encounters “Bianca” (Rosana Pastor) and discovers quickly that this is a brutal conflict. His ‘side’ are united in their intellectual detestation of fascism, but thereafter he soon discovers that there is little else that glues this disparate group of communists together and after he is wounded, he heads to Barcelona where he finds even less satisfaction amongst an urban militia whose agenda is just as pragmatically conflicted as it is dogmatically joined up. What else to do but to return to his original group, but with the war rapidly coming to a conclusion and him realising that uncomfortable compromises are having to be made, is there any future for him here or might he just try to make it back home? Though this film is undoubtedly trying to make a statement, I found it to be completely devoid of nuance or characterisations. The theory of the friend of my enemy is my friend seems to be the mortar that underpins their battle plan, and yet it becomes clear that these people soon stop fighting for “the” cause and start fighting for “a” cause, In fact, it could be “any” cause that suits their generalised oppos…