At the door of the Walter Reade Theater this Thursday night, where the premiere of Alcarràs was produced in the United States within the framework of the 60th New York Film Festival (NYFF), Carla Simón concludes the farewells. If she is tired, with so much work, she hides it behind a friendly smile. What is clear is that her son Manel, three months old, continues with his eyes wide open, as if he does not want to miss a detail of the warm welcome that his mother receives.
“Wonderful”, a woman of a certain age discreetly comments to the Catalan director, already outside the room. "I was excited about the movie," remarks this cinephile.
Before the screening, Simón addresses the audience, which practically fills the room. “I hope you are one more of the Solé family”. And the feeling that permeates the atmosphere, after the official pass, is that he has really achieved it. Applause.
The general comments coincide in the beauty of the film, in that emotional connection that it forges between the stalls and those characters that, on the screen, are so real. “Natural” as Pradeep qualifies them, who already saw her previous Estiu 1993 and who captures the Catalan's ability to forge such evocative families, which seem real when they are the result of a long process of casting and coexistence.
As happened with that 2017 title, the first feature film of her career, Simón is once again chosen by Spain to fight for the Oscar for best foreign film. In the Big Apple thus begins the campaign to reach the goal of the nomination. This time she is better equipped. It has the Golden Bear at the Berlinale and its American entry comes through the New York festival, the same one that served as a springboard for Pedro Almodóvar in the country of Hollywood, of myths. To this is added that this time it has a promotion team of greater depth.
“For me it is already a victory to have come this far. I never planned to go that far and I don't make films to win an Oscar. I make movies because I have the need to explain my things and it is the medium that I like the most, ”she responds to that challenge. “I am very cautious and I try not to imagine what will happen if we arrive. We go step by step, following all the way to be able to go as far as we can. But it is true that then there are the expectations of others, that I cannot control them and something like that generates many. But there is a long way to go and you have to be careful, ”she says.
Having passed that initial test, Simón explains that it was only a screening and that, furthermore, he had to leave shortly after it began, without verifying the reactions of the audience; Manel has gotten hungry.
Those of his team comment, however, that the spectators have reacted as they reacted in other countries, they have laughed at the same moments. Those who have addressed her, like the woman from the "wonderful", make her evening happy. “A boy who lives here, of Japanese origin, has told me that he has felt a lot of nostalgia, that the film has transported him to things in his family and this is the most beautiful thing, when people get hooked and you manage to connect with some of his things ”, says the director.
That admiration is evident in Eugene Hérnandez, executive director of the NYFF, who acts as Simón's interviewer after the fade to black, or in the two assistants who ask a question each. It is here that the director details how she made the selection of actors among citizens of various towns (900 people in total were interviewed), or how the coexistence was to the point that, after filming, they continue to call each other father, mother, grandfather or son. And, once Manel was born, he went to introduce him to what is now his other family.
In that questionnaire, he acknowledges that real people forced him to make some changes to his original script to adapt the circumstances to the world in which the story unfolded, although the most relevant change was the ending. He wanted a happy one but he understood that "it would be naïve", not in keeping with a situation in which many have to give up their agricultural lifestyle, that of the family farm, due to the overwhelming irruption of the large agri-food companies.
"The actors are impressive and they tell a story that many will probably relate to certain forms of existence that have been lost, especially to capitalism and the profit motive," says Laura. She maintains that she has felt alluded to. “There are universal aspects, here also happened what of the families of farmers. Even to people who don't identify with that, there's a beauty about this local story, in an unknown place, that draws viewers in,” she adds.
Hollywood?” a journalist asks Simón. “That path may open up, but for now, I don't feel too prepared. He didn't focus much on that and I think I still have things at home to explain, ”he replies.
“When you want to make a big production like the ones made here, I think it has to make sense to me if it connects me with something. I couldn't take a commission and that's it, because it's not my way of making movies. I'm always open, I'm not saying no, but I think it has to be something that really has some connection with me. Perhaps it is that it is not yet the time because there are things to explain at home and it will come ”, he adds.
His immediate project is to close the trilogy. Estiu 1993 is childhood, Alcarràs, her family and the third is about a person like her, who lost her parents as a child, who lacks that family and her memories.
Deborah and Hawkon have liked a place called Alcarràs, it has made them relive instances of their past. That it is a film in Catalan has not caused them any problem. "I don't understand Catalan or Spanish," says Hawkon. "I was so absorbed by the subtitles that I didn't notice the accent," adds Deborah.
Carla Simón, with her feet on the ground, still does not think about the most famous red carpet in the world. “My way of healing myself, of managing my dreams and my expectations, consists in not projecting anything until I see it as possible”, she clarifies. "It's a superstition, those things that you still don't see are going to happen, it's better not to imagine them," she concludes. First stage, New York.
