A sangre y fuego | J.A. Bayona

[Cremildo]

Spain’s J.A. Bayona, director of “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom” and two episodes of “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power,” is developing an adaptation of Manuel Chaves Nogales’ short story collection “A sangre y fuego,” now considered by some in Spain as the best portrayal by a Spaniard of its ghastly Spanish Civil War.

Bayona is working with writer-director Agustín Díaz Yanes (“Alatriste,” “Gold,” “Don’t Tempt Me”) to develop a script, based on the book by Chaves Nogales who died in exile in London in 1944.

Talking on stage at the Seville European Film Festival, which opened on Friday, Bayona said he had been developing the project for several years and is “especially interested in the humanist vision” that Chaves Nogales showed in the fiction book.

Written over 1936-37 by Chaves Nogales in reaction to what he called “the stupidity and cruelty which lorded over Spain” during the Spanish Civil War, practiced by both extreme right and extreme left, “A sangre y fuego” takes in nine different stories.

They range from an account of Republican executions in a Madrid bombarded by Franco’s forces and his fascist allies to an Andalusian marquess who sets out to hunt communists with his personal death squad to a militia woman who saves the life of a right-wing lawyer out of compassion.

Though fiction, all the stories are based on true events, Chaves Nogales wrote in a preface. [+]