Alcarràs

Director: Carla Simón

Producers: Tono Folguera, Sergi Moreno, Stefan Schmitz, María Zamora

Cast: Jordi Pujol Dolcet, Anna Otin, Xènia Roset, Albert Bosch, Ainet Jounou

Spain, Italy 2022
120′

It was worth waiting five long years for Carla Simón latest film, after her memorable Summer 1993. Alcarràs received the Golden Bear at Berlinale and the Catalan director managed to keep everything that made her debut so exciting. The story of the light and shadows of everyday life of farmers from the titular village offers an autobiographical sincerity, warmth and a discreet sense of humor, familiar from Summer 1993. In both films, placing children in the center allows the director to give the trivial, seemingly plain events an extraordinary quality. However, this is where the similarities end, as the intimate Alcarràs is unexpectedly enriched with political overtones nearly totally absent from Simón’s debut. As in the classic The Tree of Wooden Clogs, the peace of the provincial world is irreversibly shattered by modernity and progress. In the face of these events, the protagonists must make the choice between pragmatism and idealism before our very eyes.