Alcarràs,
by Carla Simón, has won the Berlin Golden Bear 2022. The 35-year-old filmmaker is the first Spanish director to win a major festival, and like her debut,
Verano 1993,
she does so with a film attached to her family and to the land.
M. Night Shyamalan, president of the jury, spoke of the marvelous combination of
amateur
actors from various generations and their mixture with a camera glued to the ground.
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'Alcarràs', the family drama about the decline of the rural world by Carla Simón, dazzles at the Berlinale
On stage, Simón recalled the struggle of his family and other farmers to remain faithful to that land and that crop that they still do with care and affection.
Carla Simón's career started right in this contest, in February 2017, when
Verano 1993
won the award for best first film in all sections, after also winning the award for best feature film in the section in which it participated, Generation Kplus.
With
Alcarràs,
which will be released in Spanish theaters in the spring, the filmmaker has continued to explore her own story and that of her family, on this occasion her mother's, dedicated to growing fruit trees in an artisanal way, a business that is living its last days because of the price drop.
"I felt a very strong desire to portray a world that is ending, the one that lives by collecting peaches and Paraguayans," she said in Berlin.
Hence the title, because of the city where his cousins and uncles live (the film is also a tribute to his deceased grandfather), Alcarràs, with 9,000 inhabitants west of Lleida, in the Segriá region, who lives mainly on the fruit cultivation.
"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, ”said the filmmaker.
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Video of 'Alcarràs', by Carla Simón
An image of 'Alcarràs'.
Simón's camera goes from one point of view to another, from character to character, in an organic way so that the viewer understands all the members of a fictional family, who sees how they have lost their fruit trees —which will be replaced by plates photovoltaic—because they did not have a written use agreement with the owners.
And the fascinating thing is that the protagonists are played by people from the region, who are not actors and do not know 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, before the pandemic, ”Simón recalled.
The health crisis stopped filming.
“Once chosen, in the post-pandemic, I brought them together to rehearse in pairs and different possibilities: one day the grandfather and the granddaughter, another the brothers-in-law,
Alcarràs
could only be filmed in the summer months, when peaches and Paraguayans are harvested, and for this reason the team had to wait until the summer of 2021 to make the film.
The jury prize went to
Mantle of gems,
of the Bolivian-Mexican, by Natalia López Gallardo.
She has made her big debut with a drama about entrenched violence in Mexico.
that she directs, writes and edits.
It is also true that the filmmaker has a long career behind her as editor of the films of Amat Escalante, Lisandro Alonso and her husband, Carlos Reygadas.
The Silver Bear for the best direction went to the French Claire Denis, for her
Avec amour et acharnement,
which unfortunately is not his best film.
In it, Juliette Binoche plays an almost perfect woman, a radio host with a socially committed program, a faithful lover and companion, who financially supports her partner (Vincent Lindon), but who enters a spiral of emotional destruction and throws herself into the double plays as soon as her ex (Grégoire Colin) appears, who was also her husband's best friend.
The Berlinale awards two acting prizes without distinction of gender.
The jury chaired by M. Night Shyamalan and which included, among others, the French producer Saïd Ben Saïd, the Japanese director —and man of the moment— Ryûsuke Hamaguchi or the Danish actress Connie Nielsen, decided to choose Meltem for the best leading performance. Kaplan, that in
Rabiye Kurnoz vs.
George W Bush
gives life to a Turkish mother settled in Germany who fights to get her son out of Guantanamo, where he spent years unjustly imprisoned.
The libretto, which illustrates a real case, also won the Silver Bear for best screenplay for its author, Laila Stieler. Unfortunately, it is shot with telefilm makings.
As a secondary performance, she won the Indonesian Laura Basuki, who plays a butcher and lover of the husband of the protagonist of
Nana,
a film that can be defined as a
Desire to love for beginners.
The Cambodian Rithy Pahn, specialized in his cinema in pursuit of historical memory, won the Silver Bear for the outstanding artistic contribution for
Everything Will Be Ok,
a film inspired by
Animal Farm
and with an ugly anti-vaccine final detail, and that it is a far cry from his best works, such as
The Waning Image.
It has been a cold Berlinale.
Not so much because of the weather, which in the end has shown a kind face, without rain and with 1 or 2 degrees of temperature at noon, which would seem like a German spring, as with the daily antigen tests, obligatory for everyone who entered a contest venue: from contest workers to filmmakers, including journalists or members of the film industry.
As the European Film Market was not held in person but online, there was much less atmosphere in the restaurants, bars and streets adjacent to the Berlinale Palast.
Movie theaters had their capacity reduced to 50%, which also did not help film passions or applause or boos at the screen.
Finally, the Official section, which in the Berlinale is called Competition, has been quite disappointing,
The Berlinale has been held since 1951. In its first edition five Golden Bears were awarded, between 1952 and 1955 the winner was chosen by the public, and since 1956 an international jury selects the winners.
Spain has a unique record: in 1978 the jury chaired by Patricia Highsmith decided that Spanish films were so good that the Golden Bear went to the entire delegation, which was made up of
Las truchas,
by José Luis García Sánchez;
The words of Max,
by Emilio Martínez Lázaro, and the short film
Ascensor,
by Tomás Muñoz.
Previously, there had already been a Spanish winner: in 1960 the Golden Bear went to
El lazarillo de Tormes,
Cesar Fernandez Ardavin.
Subsequently, there have been two other successful Spanish filmmakers at the Berlinale: Carlos Saura won the Golden Bear with
Deprisa, deprisa
in
1981, and Mario Camus with
La colmena
in 1983
. with majority Spanish production that even reached the Oscars.
It has always been a festival that is very open to Latin American cinema, and has also received many awards.