Film Screening
The Executioner (El verdugo)

Influenced by Italian neorealism, Luis García Berlanga’s black-comedy masterpiece The Executioner (1963), critiques Franco-era values in a macabre farce about an undertaker who marries an executioner’s daughter and reluctantly takes over her father’s job. A personal attack on both capital punishment and fascist Spain, it evaded the state censors and is now regarded as one of the greatest Spanish films of all time. 92 min. In Spanish with English subtitles. Criterion Collection, 4K restoration. Introduced by Jo Labanyi, Spanish and Portuguese, NYU.

Co-sponsored by NYU’s King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center and Grey Art Gallery. Co-presented by The Criterion Collection.