Los olvidados

The Forgotten Ones

A ruthless examination of a group of street urchins living a violent and crime-filled life in the festering slums of Mexico City

The film can be seen in the tradition of social realism, although it also contains elements of surrealism, present in much of Buñuel’s work.

Los Olvidados was widely criticised on its initial release, but earned the Best Director award at the 1951 Cannes Film Festival. It is now considered a masterpiece of Latin American cinema.

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Luis Buñuel was born in Spain in 1900. He later moved to France and then Mexico. When Buñuel died at age 83, his obituary in the New York Times called him an iconoclast, moralist and revolutionary, who was a leader of Avant-Garde surrealism in his youth and a dominant international film director half a century later.

His first film Un Chien Andalou, made in the silent era, was called “the most famous short film ever made” by film critic Roger Ebert. His last film That Obscure Object of Desire, made 48 years later, won him Best Director awards from the National Board of Review and the National Society of Film Critics.

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