Tristana is a 1970 drama film co-written, directed and produced by Luis Buñuel, and starring Catherine Deneuve, Fernando Rey, and Franco Nero.

It is a Spanish-French-Italian co-production filmed in Toledo,[3] Buñuel's one-time home, and represents his return to his native country after several years living and working abroad.

Despite his advancing age, Don Lope refuses to change his playboy lifestyle, while maintaining strong yet increasingly-antiquated attitudes about honour, chivalry and women.

Claiming to defend the weak from corrupt institutions (while expressing support for leftist politics), Don Lope nonetheless preys on his new ward, entranced by her beauty and innocence.

While Tristana initially accepts the arrangement, by 21, she starts finding her voice, to demand to study music, art and other subjects with which she wishes to become independent; chafing under Don Lope, who thinks women are untrustworthy and should be kept at home.

She agrees to have a marriage of convenience with Lope in order to, as a local priest describes, "correct a previously sinful situation" but makes it clear she has no desire for a romantic or sexual relationship.

Buñuel was initially uninterested and wanted to instead film his script for The Monk, which would have starred Jeanne Moreau, Peter O'Toole and Omar Sharif.

[5] But producers at Epoca managed to find funding from Italian and French investors and secure the newly built Siena Studios in Madrid, convincing Buñuel to agree to the project.

[6] Buñuel wanted Tristana to be his triumphant return to Spain after living in Mexico for several decades and worked hard on the film.

Buñuel travelled to Spain in the spring of 1969 to begin work on the film, and was immediately sidetracked by the Spanish censors.