During the Spanish Civil War, young Carlos is abandoned at a completely isolated orphanage. The tensions therein have been building for years, exacerbated by the unexploded bomb resting menacingly in the courtyard. Bullies scheme, tempers flare, and a ghost that visits Carlos's bed seems to be the key to it all.

The most personal film by Guillermo del Toro is also among his most frightening and emotionally layered. Set during the final week of the Spanish Civil War, the tale of a ten-year-old boy who, after his freedom-fighting father is killed, is sent to a haunted rural orphanage full of terrible secrets. Del Toro effectively combines gothic ghost story, murder mystery, and historical melodrama in a stylish concoction that reminds us that the scariest monsters...

Durante los a~nos de la Post-guerra, los ni~nos jugaban en las calles sentados en circulos para contarse historias ("aventis"). El tema de estas historias era una mezcla explosiva de fantasias y cronicas urbanas, todas ellas integraban personajes y lugares reales y aveces hasta se incluia el mismo narrador. In the post Spanish civil war years, Catalan kids would sit in circles among the ruins and tell 'aventis', stories with no beginning or end or...