Historians estimate that something like 114,000 people murdered by Franco’s fascists were buried in mass graves across Spain during or after the civil war of 1936–39.

A standout in the recent Spanish Film Festival, The Teacher who Promised the Sea is the story of just one of them. Opening with a survey of a recently discovered gravesite, it’s a powerful reminder that the scars of Spain’s 20th century history are everywhere.

From this sombre starting point, filmmaker Patricia Font flashes back some 80 years into the true story of Antoni Benaiges, an idealistic left-wing schoolteacher assigned to work in the conservative village of Bañuelos de Bureba.

The Teacher who Promised the Sea

Played here by Enric Auquer, Antoni (called Antonio here) is in every way unorthodox. He talks to the local kids informally, almost as a friend. There will be, he assures them, no corporal punishment in his classroom, no rote learning. Children in his charge, he tells his doubtful housekeeper, must first learn to be children.

He teaches according to the pedagogy of the French reformer Célestin Freinet, an immersive method that has students produce their own books on subjects that interest...