Inspired by her own rural upbringing after her parents both died, the Barcelona‑born film‑maker’s latest movie won the top prize in Berlin for its vivid portrayal of Catalonia’s peach farmers
The films of Catalan writer-director Carla Simón could almost – almost – serve as tourist ads for the life bucolic. In her 2017 debut, Summer 1993, a young girl discovers the countryside for the first time, while her follow-up, Alcarràs – which won the Golden Bear, the top prize at the 2022 Berlin film festival – is set on a peach farm, where children run wild between multigenerational family meals in the sun. Yet, joyous as Simón’s two features are, they are built on a hard foundation of bitter reality. In Alcarràs, a story underpinned by the challenges faced by farmers across Europe, the Solé family lives under immediate threat of eviction, while Summer 1993 is based on Simón’s own experience as a child after the death of both her parents.
Even so, Simón’s stories brim with the hope carried by new generations – the main theme now in her own life. In London late last year, the director whose full name is Carla Simón Pipó is cheerfully wide awake despite the recent birth of a son, Manel, then three and a half months. Simón, who speaks Catalan-accented perfect English, wears a crisp, sober business suit matching the formality of a meeting room in a distinctly corporate West End hotel; Manel occasionally comes into view outside the wall’s glass panel, wheeled to and fro by his father.
