It is a newcomer, still little identified on the scene of international festivals, who, in February 2022, won the most prestigious distinction of the Berlinale, the Golden Bear, for Our suns, a profuse and very inspired agricultural chronicle. In two feature films, Carla Simon, 36, has established herself as the figure of a Catalan-Spanish scene that is currently very active (we found, the same year, on a completely different side, her compatriot Albert Serra in Cannes competition).
Each film by the director draws from her personal story elements transposed into the universals of fiction. Summer 93 (2017) evoked his early childhood, the loss of both parents to AIDS. Our suns sketches the last summer of a family of sharecroppers, peach farmers, threatened with eviction following the requalification of their land into a park of solar panels.
What is your background ?
I grew up in the countryside, in a house at the edge of the forest. In high school, a teacher showed us the film Unknown code [2000], by Michael Haneke, which made a big impression on me. I wanted to learn more about films, but couldn’t afford to go to school. I went to Barcelona to study visual communication. During an exchange, I spent a year in California breathing American optimism and finally believing in my lucky star. After obtaining a scholarship, I finished my studies at the London Film School, in England. It was there that my interest in family stories took shape, and that I wrote my first feature film, Summer 93.
What was the writing process for “Nos soleils”?
I usually start by making lists of moments or images that I would like to put in. In the case of’Summer 93, it was mostly a collection of memorabilia. Here, I wanted to anchor the story in this village of Alcarras, in western Catalonia. With my co-screenwriter, Arnau Vilaro, we wrote on the spot. We settled in my uncle’s house during the summer, we observed everything while trying to reproduce it faithfully – like my cousin dropping a pallet full of peaches on the ground! [Rires.]
The actors, non-professionals, form a very convincing family on screen. How did you find them?
It was very long. They had to be local, because they practiced a specific Catalan dialect. And also because we can recognize, on the screen, a real farmer from someone who is simulating. We started casting before the Covid-19 pandemic, touring village festivals, cooperatives, markets, in the specific areas where peaches are grown. We had a caravan in which we made people go up to film them. It was easier to find women and children than men, since most of them were busy in the summer, during the harvest. We saw, like that, nearly 9,000 people.
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