Full Description
Sixteenth Century Mexico: Dominican Inquisitors, renegade priests, secret Jewish prayer meetings, the plague. "Fiction inspired by fact" is how Mexican film director Arturo Ripstein describes his gripping drama about the Spanish Inquisition in the "New World." A Jewish family, already converted to Catholicism like thousands of others, is betrayed by a son who reports to the Holy Office of the Catholic Church that they still practice the old faith. Some family members capitulate to the Church, others resist, some are driven mad in a society that still burns Jews, "witches," and adulterers at the stake. This film, based on original transcripts of trials during the period, expertly portrays both the austerity and the fanaticism of the time, while it conveys the hope and faith that men and women have in God and justice.
