OVID.tv Presents IN EXILE: A FAMILY FILM Review

The director, Juan Francisco Urrusti Alonso, traces the history of his families, Urrusti and Alonso, both emigrants from Spain after the Spanish Civil War ending in 1939. Combining period footage of pre-war Spain, family photos, newsreels from the war, and interviews with his surviving family members, Urrusti Alonso crafts a family memoir with a surprise. He begins by tracing the military coup against the legitimately elected republican government in 1936. His families were staunch republicans. The Alonso men were educated telegraph operators who flourished pre-war. During the war, their communication skills were in high demand. The Urrustis were munitions experts—engineers who designed arms before the war and spent the war repairing canons and guns on the front lines. Members of both families survived, but knew there would be no place for them in Franco’s Spain. They were separately able to secure transport out of Spain on the same ship, bound for Mexico. With 1600 survivors, they crossed to Vera Cruz and a new life.

OVID.tv Inclusion of IN EXILE is a Good Match for Those Interested In Finding Their Roots

It was only later, as they settled in Mexico City, that family members met and discovered they were voyagers on the same ship. They never knew each other until settled in Mexico. They also had in common a shared happiness at being in Mexico, which the filmmaker perhaps only comes to realize as he interviews them for this film. In interviews with his parents and grandparents, he learned firsthand how their inability to live in Franco’s Spain was relieved by the genuine acceptance they felt in Mexico.