Alcarràs

Winner of the Golden Bear award at the Berlin Film Festival, Simón’s gorgeous drama is a warmhearted, multigenerational portrait of a Catalan family struggling for their peach orchard’s survival. At the film’s opening, the family faces eviction when the land’s owner decides to replace the trees with solar panels. Simón was hailed as a vibrant newcomer in 2017, after her luscious evocation of childhood and loss, Summer 1993. Alcarràs adds further proof that she’s a talent to watch: it hums with conflicts large and small, from encroaching technology and the decline of traditional farming to the brutally cyclical nature of farmers’ lives, forever pegged to fickle weather and subject to climate change. Captured in gently sensuous, sun-filled cinematography, and enriched by spirited slice-of-life writing for an incredible ensemble of nonprofessional actors, Alcarràs celebrates families in their emotional infinitude and life in its bittersweetness and implacable fullness.