 |
| Carla Simon |
Catalan writer-director Carla Simón was six-years-old when she was orphaned. Both her parents died from needle-transmitted AIDS.
Simón was forced to leave Barcelona for a small town in northern Catalonia, where she was raised by her uncle and his family. She later studied film in Barcelona and the London Film School.
Now 39, she has helmed three feature films and eight shorts.
SUMMER 1993 (2017), streaming on Apple TV
Simón’s first feature was an instant success and chosen to represent Spain at the 2018 Academy Awards.
An autobiographical backstory to her latest feature Romería (2025), Summer 1993 opens with the orphaned six-year-old Frida (played by an astonishing Laia Artigas), being forced to leave Barcelona to live with her uncle Esteve, his wife Marga and their daughter Anna on a self-sufficient Catalonian farm.
Frida is completely disorientated by the experience. Disorientated by farm life after Barcelona; disorientated by her new family; and particularly disorientated by a developing relationship with the four-year-old Anna. At various times, she puts the younger girl in danger and her new guardians fear they have been lumbered with a dysfunctional child. They wonder if they should get rid of her.
In her village, rumours surround Frida and she becomes further disoriented when ostracized after bleeding in a playground accident. AIDS is never mentioned, but the blood phobia, the mention of ‘a virus’ and the constant trips to the doctor for blood tests make it clear both her parents have died of AIDS.
Frida’s hard-fought journey to accept her pariah status and come to terms with her new world drives a simple narrative distinguished by its heightened emotional power. Laia Artigas plays Frida brilliantly, with a poker face and wide-eyed observance of all around her, as she constantly figures out her new life.
For a first feature, Summer 1993 heralds a fully formed filmmaker in confident control over nuance and ellipsis, and blessed with a quite remarkable child actor.
It won the Best First Feature Award at the Berlin Film Festival and three Spanish Goya Awards, including Best New Director and Best Screenplay. It won Best Director in the International Competition at Buenos Aires; and at the Gaudi Awards it garnered Best Film, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Supporting Actress, Best Editing. The Feroz Awards gave it Best Drama, Best Supporting Actor and Best Screenplay. In all, 30 awards from around the world.
ALCARRÀS (2022), streaming on Apple TV and Prime
Pedro Almodóvar has called Simón’s second feature a masterpiece: “Behind Alcarràs’s apparent simplicity lies a meticulous director, with hundreds of hours’ worth of work to make this masterpiece look like a documentary.”
It won the Golden Bear at the 2022 Berlin Film Festival and was Spain’s entry to the Academy Awards. Followed by Best Film, Best Director and Best Screenplay at Catalonia’s Gaudi Awards. Alcarrás screened in 60 international film festivals and sold to 35 territories.
The extended Solé family in Catalonia have farmed the same land for generations; land given to them in a verbal promise by a neighbouring family they hid during the Spanish Civil War. The new owner of the land disregards the old verbal agreement and wants them to destroy their fruit trees and install solar panels instead. Faced with rabbit plagues, flooding and price gouging from supermarkets, the family are marooned in a legal quagmire; their way of life doomed.
The cast are entirely non-professional and Simón carefully fuses the rhythms of everyday farming life with the rhythms of the natural world. Hovering above her beautifully rendered portrait of this humanist family, is the encroachment of a ruthless commercial world wanting to repurpose the land and force protesting farmers into capitulation.
Once again, familial disorientation is Simón’s principal focus and this time a whole extended family are disoriented. Beautifully directed, Alcarrás once again also shows Simón’s extraordinary talent with actors of all ages.
ROMERĺA (2025), current Spanish and Latin American Film Festival
In Competition at Cannes in 2025, Simón’s latest feature upgrades the orphaned six-year-old Frida of Summer 1993 to the now 18-year-old orphan Marina (Llúcia Garcia), who is wanting to apply for a scholarship to study film at a Barcelona university.
But her name doesn’t appear on her father’s death certificate and she must obtain validation of her birth from a grandparent. Clutching her mother’s diary, she journeys to Vigo in Galicia to meet with her parental family for the first time. She wants her grandfather to sign the appropriate change to his son’s death certificate.
Everything is awkward about her visit, firstly with an uncle and his family; and then with a dressmaker aunt; with young cousins who have been warned not to touch Marina because of her blood; and with contradictory stories and dates about her parents. Finally at an extended family gathering in the sumptuous home of her grandparents, she finds she is anything but welcomed, or wanted.
Marina spends her whole pilgrimage (romeria) in wide-eyed, dazed disorientation, waiting for snippets of information about her parents. She does learn of their heroin addiction, their drug dealing, and her AIDS-positive mother taking Marina to Barcelona as a baby. She is devastated to learn the grandparents kept her AIDS-afflicted father a virtual hostage in their house until his death.
Simón then shifts gears from the naturalism of all her features, and creates a magical realist third act where Marina spectates on the lives of her parents.
Among its other qualities, Romería is a chance to wonder at who our parents really were before we were born. All Simón’s great strengths are in evidence here, her naturalistic acting performances; her ability to make us feel like wide-eyed spectators experiencing the chaotic humanity of extended family life; and the almost subliminal way she makes us feel the ache and pain of a lost family.
Carla Simón’s next project is a flamenco musical.
@jnoe635098
5 days ago