The war that won't die charts the changing nature of cinematic depictions of the Spanish Civil War. When the civil broke out in 1936, a significant number of artists, filmmakers and writers - from George Orwell and Pablo Picasso to Joris Ivens and Joan Miró - rallied to support the country's democratically-elected Republican government. The arts played an important role in shaping popular understandings of this dramatic historical period and this book examines cinema's specific role in this process.

The book's focus is on fictional feature films produced within Spain and beyond its borders between the 1940s and the early years of the twenty-first century - including Hollywood Blockbusters, East European films, the work of the avant garde in Paris and films produced under Franco's censorial dictatorship. In providing critical analyses of a diverse range of cinematic depictions of the period, the book draws on, and situates these analyses within, contemporary debates on Spanish Civil War historiography, the philosophy of history, and the relationship between the past and its cinematic representation. The book highlights the elasticity of cinematic depictions of one historical event, and suggests that the civil war setting will continue to be one to which filmmakers turn as the battle for Spain's future is partially played out in the cinematically recreated battles of the past.

The book will appeal to scholars and students of Film, Media and Hispanic Studies, but also to historians and, indeed, anyone interested in why the Spanish Civil War remains such a contested political topic.