The Children of Russia

In 1937, some 3,000 sons and daughters of Spanish Republican fighters were evacuated to the Soviet Union for what was intended as a temporary escape from bombing and privation. But Franco's victory, the German invasion of the USSR and Stalinism conspired to keep the kids there for 20 years or more, some never returned, while others started over yet again in Cuba. Writer/director Camino's sequence of interviews with the surviving children, now in their 70s, is choppily assembled, but the story itself, tracing the emotional fallout of displacement and attenuated longing, transcends the rusty mechanics. JWin.