ALCARRÁS

Director: Carla Simón Subject: Carla Simón, Arnau Vilaró Screenplay: Carla Simón, Arnau Vilaró Cinematography: Daniela Cajías Editing: Anna Pfaff

Set design: Mónica Bernuy Costume design: Anna Aguilà First Assistant Director: Daniela Forn Sound engineer: Eva Valiño Producer: María Zamora , Giovanni Pompili, Stefan Schmitz, Sergi Moreno, Tono Folguera

World sales: MK2 FILMS

A production of Avalon, Vilaut, Elastica Films, Kino Produzioni, with the contribution of MIC - Direzione Generale Cinema e Audiovisivo, TVE, Movistar+ and TV3, with the support of Eurimages, ICAA, ICEC, Media, Diputació de Lleida

SYNOPSIS

As far as they can remember, the Solé family have spent every summer picking the peaches from their orchard in Alcarràs, a small village in Spain. But this year’s crop could be their last, as they face eviction. The new plans for the land include cutting down the peach trees and installing solar panels, which causes a rift within the large tight-knit family. For the first time, they face an uncertain future and risk losing more than their home.

CARLA SIMÓN BIOGRAPHY

Carla Simón (born 1986) is a film writer and director raised in a small Catalan village. She studied Audio-visual Communication in Barcelona and in California. In 2011 she was awarded a scholarship by La Caixa for a Master’s program at the London Film School, where she directed the short films BORN POSITIVE, LIPSTICK , LAS PEQUEÑAS COSAS  and LLACUNES.

SUMMER 1993  (2017) is her autobiographical debut. It won the Best First Feature Award and the Generation Kplus  Grand Prix at the Berlinale, along with three Goya awards, including Best New Director. The film collected more than 30 prizes all over the world, it was selected to represent Spain at the 2018 Oscar Academy Awards and it got the Discovery nomination at the European Film Awards. Carla received the 2018 Women in Motion Emerging Talent award in Cannes.

Her last short films are IF THEN ELSE and CORRESPONDENCE, an epistolary conversation with Dominga Sotomayor shown in Visions du Réel, New York Film Festival or San Sebastian.

ALCARRÀS is Carla’s second feature, which took part in the Torino Script Lab, Nipkow Program, MFI and Cannes Residency.

DIRECTOR’S NOTE OF INTENT

“ My first film, Summer 1993, told the story of my biological mum and her family. I now want to approach the story of my adoptive mother, her family and the place where she grew up: Alcarràs. Alcarràs is small village in the deepest Catalonia that we usually call the Catalan Far West, because of the flatness of its landscape and the toughness of its people. My two uncles grow peaches in Alcarràs. They used to do it together with my Grandfather while he was alive. Their lands have been like a second home to me, as I go there every Christmas and summer holidays. I have lived important moments there so this place has an enormous emotional value. Around 10 years ago, my family lost the 80% of the fields they cultivated. They had a gentleman’s agreement with the owner to work these fields “forever” as they helped his family to survive during the Civil War. But when the old owner died, his grandson inherited the land and asked my family to leave. As there was nothing signed, they went from having a big farming business to being forced to start all over again. I was still quite young then but I could feel and share their rage, their helplessness and their sense of injustice and betrayal. In this moment of crisis, I observed how my family relationships transformed. This is why the film portrays the Solés changing roles at a moment when they’re about to loose their common identity. This is a story about belonging to a land, to a place but it is also a drama about everlasting generational tension, overcoming old traditions and the importance of family unity in times of crisis. The tone of the film will have a lot to do with my feelings towards this place and towards my Grandfather, who died four years ago. My grief made me value his entire legacy and his farming job. It also made me observe the space he inhabited and the trees he cultivated from a beautiful nostalgia that will somehow impregnate the project. Moreover, there is a parallelism between the last days of an elderly person who is about to die and the last days of cultivating a land that has a huge emotional significance. In both cases the feelings are blossoming. The Solé family tries to make the most of this summer, creating mental photographs of joyful moments, but at the same time the sadness of leaving this place seizes them, creating a tone of bittersweet nuances that will shape the emotional spectrum of the film. I always say that I have a very big family, full of stories, and that for me they are my main source of inspiration. This is why I felt this needed to be an ensemble film; because it will allow me to portray the relationships in the way I experience them in my own family. I totally believe that approaching the reality of my family in Alcarràs means portraying a place and a group of characters that have an extraordinary cinematic value.”

PRESS RELEASE

ITALY

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International newspapers and periodicals (English)

2022/02/19 The Guardian by Jonathan Romney

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International newspapers and periodicals (other languages)

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2019/09/25 Variety

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RADIO

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