“‘... Cria (Cuervos) was born in the final scene of La Prima Angelica: a mother combing her daughter's hair before a mirror which is the camera. That image took shape when I saw Ana Torrent, the child-star of my film, in the picture El Espiritu de la Colmena (Spirit of the Beehive). She fascinated me, and became the stimulus that brought me to organize my scattered material.' (Carlos Saura)
“Cria! is a film of moments -- moments from the private personal world of a sensitive 9-year-old child, a world where there are no boundaries between reality and imagination. For Anna, dancing to pop records with her two sisters is as real as the intimate exchanges she shares with her dead mother. Her memories, desires and fantasies are intertwined (and confused) with the everyday. After her father dies, Anna is convinced she killed him, and unwilling to inhabit a world with people not to her liking, she sets out to make her aunt her next victim. (The title Cria! is derived from the Spanish proverb about vindictive children, ‘Raise crows and they'll peck your eyes out.') Geraldine Chaplin plays both Anna's mother and the adult Anna. Just as Anna's grandmother endlessly leafs through an old family album, the adult Anna reflects back on her childhood trying to comprehend and come to terms with the presence of the past.” --Kathy Geritz