Berlin Review: Golden Bear Winner ‘Alcarrás’ From Director Carla Simon
17.02.2022 - 01:41
/ deadline.com
The Sole family grows peaches. Round white peaches ripen first; then the flat white peaches that supermarkets like; then yellow cling peaches. Their farmhouse is surrounded by the plantation they have tended for three generations, promised to them in perpetuity by the current owner’s great-grandparents during the Civil War. Memories are long in their corner of Catalonia. Nobody remembers a time before peaches. Harvesting determines the rhythm of their rumbustious family life. When the fruit ripens, it’s all hands on deck.
Director Carla Simon, whose radiant film Alcarrás has just won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival, grew up in the region of Catalonia where this film is set: Alcarrás is the name of the nearest village. Her own uncles grow peaches; the film glows not only with sunshine and her love of this country and its ways, but real, hard knowledge of how farming as a business is being daily eroded.
As the fruit hangs heavy from the trees and African workers start arriving, the Soles are faced with losing their livelihood. The current owner Joachim Pinyol (Jacob Diarte), a city-dweller who likes to affect a Stetson hat, has realized he can make more money from the land installing fields of solar panels. Forget that long-ago handshake; barring a miracle, this summer will be the family’s last season. Agribusiness, supermarkets and the utility company people in their orange uniforms will finally have inherited the Earth.
Grandpa (Josep Abad) is as perplexed as he is devastated. His own grandfather hid Pinyol’s great-grandfather in the basement during the war years; how can this no longer matter? His son Quimet (Jordy Pujol Dolcet), who is literally breaking his back running the farm, doesn’t know where to direct
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