Cría Cuervos (, "Raise ravens", also written Cría cuervos…) is a 1976 Spanish drama film directed by Carlos Saura. The film is an allegorical drama about an eight-year-old girl dealing with loss. Highly acclaimed, it received the Special Jury Prize Award at the 1976 Cannes Film Festival. Plot The events of the film are set mainly in 1975, but interweave the past, present and future. Eight-year-old Ana overhears her father, Anselmo, in bed with a woman, followed by choking sounds. The woman rushes out alone and leaves. Ana finds her father dead in bed, apparently from a heart attack. Calmly, Ana removes a half-full glass of milk from the dresser, carries it to the kitchen, and washes it. Ana's mother, María, enters the kitchen and chides her for being up so late. It is revealed shortly that Ana is imagining her mother, who previously died of cancer. At Anselmo's wake, Ana again sees the woman who fled the bedroom - Amelia, who is married to Nicolás, a longtime army compatriot of Anselmo's. (It is mentioned later that the two men had served in División Azul, volunteering to fight alongside the Nazis in World War II.) Although Ana views her father's body, she refuses to kiss his forehead when prompted by the adults. Upon returning home from the wake, Ana goes into the basement and retrieves a tin containing a white powder. The camera pans to an adult Ana, who looks exactly like María and begins to address the camera. She explains that her mother had once told her the powder was a potent poison, and that after her mother's death, she came to the conclusion that her father's cruelty had caused the cancer, so she used the powder to kill her father. Ana, who is on summer vacation from school, lives in a large, quiet house with her young sisters, Irene and Maite; her grandmother, who is mute and a wheelchair user; Roni, a pet guinea pig; and Rosa, the vivacious family maid and Ana's closest companion. Following the funeral, María's sister Paulina becomes the orphaned children's guardian and moves in. Flashbacks reveal that María was a warm and imaginative mother; in contrast, Paulina is stern and patronizing. Ana rebels against her aunt's authoritarianism while routinely reliving memories of life with her mother and imagining her presence. Many of the memories are distressing, including witnessing María writhing in pain in