Plot

In the twilight of Francisco Franco's dictatorship, an 8-year-old orphan and her two sisters find shelter in the house of their stern aunt and try their best to acclimatize to a new reality. Can they summon up the courage to grow up?

In Madrid, orphan sisters Irene, Ana, and Maite are raised by their austere aunt Paulina and their mute, crippled grandmother after the deaths of their mother and their military father Anselmo. Ana is a melancholic girl, fascinated by death, after watching her mother having a painful death and her father dead in bed.—Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

After their parents' deaths, young sisters Irene, Ana, and Maite are raised by their stern aunt Paulina and invalid grandmother. Their new world is seen through the eyes of Ana who, having witnessed their mother's death, is the most affected by the loss of their parents. She becomes fascinated by all things morbid and deadly. Flashbacks and flash-forwards round out little Ana's world where she often speaks to her dead mother.—garykmcd

In the twilight of Francisco Franco's dictatorship, 8-year-old orphan Ana is convinced that she is responsible for the death of her father, an uninvolved, disloyal military officer. After their mother's untimely death, Ana and her sisters Irene and Maite go to live with their grandmother and Aunt Paulina and try their best to acclimatize to the new reality against the backdrop of a caged childhood. Through a series of dream-like sequences, Ana seeks solace by mixing memories with fantasy in her dimly-lit room, as, more and more, she develops a morbid relationship with what seems to be a ghost. This is Ana's desperate attempt to overcome life's constant impediments. Can she summon up the courage to grow up?—Nick Riganas