Luis Bunuel's Viridiana is the story of a young novice who, in the space of a short time, is transformed from fervently pious to worldly as she moves from serving God within the convent to serving people outside the convent.

When Luis Bunuel began shooting Viridiana in 1961, he decided he did not want stars for the film ("Stars are always horrible," he once remarked). Two of the twelve beggars in the film were not professional actors: the woman dwarf (she was a lottery ticket vendor in Madrid) and the leper. "I remember in particular the remarkable character who played the leper," Bunuel wrote. "He was half beggar, half madman, and was allowed to live in the studio courtyard during the shooting. The man paid no attention whatsoever to my directions, yet he's marvelous in the movie."
- from the foreword by Inga Karetnikova