It has fought against time and the weather, against the pandemic, it opted for people from the area who had never before acted in pursuit of the credibility of what was narrated, it has just arrived at its premiere at the Berlinale —the projected copy still lacks small touches—, but finally Carla Simón (Barcelona, 35 years old) has her second feature film,
Alcarràs,
which is participating in the official section of the Berlin festival.
It is the contest that launched her career when in February 2017
Summer 1993
she won the award for best first film in all sections.
With
Alcarràs
He continues to explore his own story and that of his family, this time his mother's, dedicated to growing fruit trees in an artisanal way, a business that is experiencing its last days due to falling prices.
"I felt a very strong desire to portray a world that is ending, the one that lives by collecting peaches and Paraguayans," says the filmmaker in the German capital, where her film has received applause in its first screening, something strange in a contest marked by the cold, the silence, the social distance and the reduced capacity.
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After
Summer 1993,
which won at various festivals such as the one in Malaga and received three Goya awards, including best new director, Simón undertook two projects.
He opted for the most complex, the one that paid tribute to his deceased grandfather, his uncles and his cousins from Alcarràs, a city of 9,000 inhabitants to the west of Lleida, in the Segriá region, which lives mainly from growing fruit trees.
"Given the current times, farmers are convincing their children not to continue with the fruit, because they buy it at a price lower than its cost.
No matter how much youthful passion there is, its end is clear.
In addition, cinematographically, it seems to me a precious territory.
It is a nature built by human beings, a flat place where the sky occupies your view, something shocking for someone like me who comes from the mountains”, Simón concedes.
Carla Simón, at the 'Alcarràs' Berlinale gala session, held this Tuesday at noon.CLEMENS BILAN (EFE)
The filmmaker is concerned that current films about the rural world travel a lot to the past "and what is happening is not being told."
She is agitated as in a few moments —she is a woman with a calm and smiling character—: “If you are looking for a poetic point of view, nobody shows how hard it is.
I see my uncles in that brutal job, and I witness how they want my cousins to dedicate themselves to something else.
Alcarràs
It has arrived so just in Berlin, since its post-production in Rome, that not even his family has been able to see it.
Yes, the actors have, who at the presentation press conference commented with emotion that someone was finally showing her world.
“We like people to see it”, “We went from being nothing to being a lot” and “I hope that people understand what it costs to put the food they are going to eat on their plate” were some of his comments.
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The story of the film is the story of more losses: the leading family has to abandon the land because it was ceded in a verbal agreement almost a century ago, and the owner's grandson is going to install solar panels on the land.
The family home is deeded in favor of the protagonist clan, and conflicts between generations and between different points of view are imprisoned there, boiling to the point of explosion.
“The curious thing is that the two options, solar panels or fruit trees, are valid.
It is a lawful debate, which gives us complexity”.
Simón's camera goes from one point of view to another in an organic way so that the viewer understands them all.
The complex thing is that the protagonists are embodied by people from the region, who are not actors or even related to each other.
“We did a selection process among almost 9,000 people.
We went through the major festivals from town to town looking for who could embody each character for a year.
Luckily, we did this before the pandemic, because today it would be impossible, ”he recalls.
Some were already there before the health crisis, which completely stopped filming.
"Once chosen, in the post-pandemic, I brought them together to rehearse in pairs and different possibilities: one day the grandfather and granddaughter, another the brothers-in-law, another the three brothers... And we improvised possible family situations so that they would create ties."
Image of 'Alcarràs'.
Alcarràs
was going to be filmed in the summer of 2020, a date required by the manual harvesting of peaches and Paraguayans, "sweet fruits that rot if you don't pick them, a point of urgency that suits the film well."
But the pandemic reached Spain: "We had to stop for a whole year, which I dedicated to writing my third feature."
In the summer of 2021 he finally got behind the cameras, although there is not a single reference to covid-19 on screen.
“Because what happens with the coronavirus goes against the script, with a very large family, with different generations cohabiting, and I wanted to talk about human relationships of people who touch each other, who love each other, who hate each other and who talk to each other” .
There are free children, exploring, playing in a summer in which the little ones do not sense the dark clouds that are approaching, except when the body of a two-horse that serves as a spaceship is snatched from them.
“I have lived the history of my family since the new generation.
Actually, I would be more of the teenager who opens up to the world and begins to empathize with the emotions of adults.
But now that I am going to be a mother [she touches her belly, four months pregnant], my perspective is going to change”.
There are notes on the role of women in rural areas, "which is still far from equality, although young women are at their best."
There will also be a female lead in her third film, "which will focus on the memory I don't have, something that worries me, and from the realistic, almost documentary tone, I will move on to more dreamlike, imaginative parts."
Carla Simón, during the shooting in the summer of 2021 of 'Alcarràs'.
Alcarràs
drinks from the telluric and the human, it smells like
La terra trema,
by Visconti;
Bitter rice,
by De Santis, or
The Tree of Clogs,
by Olmi, which she herself mentions.
Simón has grown as a filmmaker.
“I have learned a lot doing this film;
at least I have been more aware of this learning than with
Summer 1993,
which was more to sticks.
Building a choral story is very difficult, directing a dozen newcomers was terrible... However, it has made me understand that I enjoy incredible narrative freedom as a filmmaker.
All the emotions have been planned, true, and at the same time when it was time to choose a project, I decided with María [Zamora, the producer] to throw myself into something I didn't know how to do.
I couldn't film without challenges."
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