Luis Buñuel stood at the back of a Paris theater in 1929 with stones in his pockets, ready to hurl them at hecklers during the premiere of Un Chien Andalou. Instead, the elite audience applauded, and the surrealist provocateur found himself absorbed by the very establishment he wanted to insult. This episode traces the life of the Spanish-Mexican filmmaker from a devout Jesuit-educated boyhood in Calanda and Zaragoza, through his rejection of the church at sixteen, to the legendary student residence in Madrid where he lived alongside Salvador Dalí and Federico García Lorca.

The story follows Buñuel through the riots and Vatican fury over L'Age d'Or, the banned poverty documentary Las Hurdes, exile after the Spanish Civil War, Dalí's betrayal that cost him his job at the Museum of Modern Art, and nearly two decades directing 21 films in the  ...