Winner of the Golden Bear at this year’s Berlinale Festival and Spain’s official selection for Best International Feature at the 95th Academy Awards, Spanish filmmaker Carla Simón’s sun-dappled and deeply moving sophomore film, “Alcarràs” was one of the most acclaimed films of the year from the festival circuit.
Shot in Alcarràs, Catalonia (North Eastern Spain, where they generally don’t speak Spanish), in the Western dialect of the Catalan language, featuring a non-professional cast of actors, the film is a family drama about the disappearance of traditional peach-harvesting activities.
“Simón envelops her characters in unfettered tenderness, which she extends to the portrayal of the spaces that surround them,” we wrote in our Berlin review. “A wife massages the hardened back of her husband, harnessing the warm vapor exuding from the bath where their young daughter splashes water away.” She just signed with UTA recently, too, so U.S. talent agencies have certainly taken notice of her talents.
Here’s the synopsis from the New York Film Festival, another major fall festival where the film screened:
Winner of the Golden Bear at this year’s Berlinale Festival, Carla Simón’s follow-up to her acclaimed childhood drama Summer 1993 is a ruminative, lived-in portrait of a rural family in present-day Catalonia whose way of life is rapidly changing. The Solé clan live in a small village, annually harvesting peaches for local business and export. However, their livelihood is put in jeopardy by the looming threat of the construction of solar panels, which would necessitate the destruction of their orchard. From this simple narrative, pitting agricultural tradition against the onrushing train of modern progress, Simón weaves a marvelously textured film that moves to the unpredictable rhythms and caprices of nature and family life.
A MUBI release, “Alcarràs,” hits U.S. & U.K. theaters on January 6. The film hits Latin American cinemas on January 5 and streams exclusively in the U.S., Canada, U.K., Ireland, Latin America, Turkey & India from February 24.
