It’s not often the year in cinema kicks off with one of the most acclaimed films of recent memory, but that will be the case in 2023. Carla Simón impressed us with her lovely debut Summer 1993 a few years back and now she returns with Alcarràs, winner of the Berlinale Golden Bear and Spain’s Oscar entry. Ahead of a January 6 theatrical release for the family drama from MUBI, the first U.S. trailer has now arrived.
Rory O’Connor said in his review, “Big agriculture and a renewable energy company (of all people) threaten the livelihood of a Catalonian peach farming family in Alcarràs, Carla Simón’s latest sunny pastoral and her first since the 2017 debut Summer 1993. Alcarràs is set in the present day, though you’d hardly notice, and like many of its characters it looks towards the past. That idea––that time has a way of sometimes flattening out––feels central to Simón’s film and distinguishes it from similar works of social realism: Alcarràs appears simple, even slight at first, but is deceptively far-reaching; enough at least to have impressed a Berlinale jury led by M. Night Shyamalan (and including no less than Ryusuke Hamaguchi), who collectively awarded Simón the Golden Bear.”
See the trailer below.
Alcarràs opens in theaters on January 6.