El Verdugo

A screening of the film El Verdugo. Co-writers Rafael Azcona and Luis García Berlanga construct a razor-sharp evasion of Francoist censorship while confronting the dictatorship's contempt for human dignity. Timid José Luis marries an executioner's daughter and, trapped by economic insecurity and a housing shortage, reluctantly assumes his father-in-law's trade to secure a state-allocated apartment, convinced he will never have to perform an execution. Through escalating, merciless black humour, the filmmakers weaponise the mundane struggle for survival, exposing how poverty and bureaucracy can turn an ordinary citizen into an unwilling instrument of state violence.