The controversy surrounding his first feature length film, L'Age d'Or, leaves director Luis Buñuel unable to find new work.

When they film a school, they find out that locals make most of their money getting government payments for taking in orphaned children, and the schoolchildren crowd around Buñuel desperate for affection.

In La Alberca, Buñuel makes Ramón hire a farmer to reenact the local tradition of ripping the head off of a rooster.

Notes at the end of this movie explain that days after the Nationalist coup in Spain, Ramón Acín and then his wife were executed for their Anarchist activity.

The website's critical consensus states: "Thrillingly imaginative and appropriately surreal, Buñuel and the Labyrinth of the Turtles open an alluringly dreamlike window into the life of a brilliant artist.

[8] Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 74 out of 100, based on 12 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".