After last year’s virtual edition, the 72nd Berlin Film Festival was once again a physical event. This year 18 feature films were in the official competition. The jury, chaired by American director Night Shyamalan, awarded the Golden Bear for Best Film to Spanish film-maker Carla Simón for Alcarràs.
Alcarràs takes us to the heart of the Solé family, farmers who specialize in growing peaches in the Catalan village of Alcarràs. For 24 years the Solé family have lived off the production of their orchard, but the land doesn’t belong to them and they are threatened by eviction.
Through this story Carla Simón delicately shows a farming community in difficulty as well as, in close-up, a family plagued by doubts. The jurors appreciated the subtleties of the story and gave it the highest award “for the extraordinary performances of the children, for its ability to illustrate the tenderness, humour and struggle of this family and for its depiction of our connection with the land we depend on.”
Born in Barcelona in 1986, Carla Simón spent part of her childhood in a small Catalan village. Like the characters in the film, her parents cultivated peaches. Its proximity to the agricultural world makes Alcarràs a personal work. She wanted to “show what farming is today” by “recounting these stories from the inside, with their multiple viewpoints.” So the festival’s highest distinction went to a deeply intimate, political film.
This award confirms the work of a young film-maker who won the award for Best First Film at the 2017 Berlinale for Summer 1993.
