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Will
Hi. I'm Will Webb. And this is why you should watch. This episode of the podcast is a little different as instead of talking about an inspiration, we're talking about the director's own work. In this episode, I'm joined by Carla Simon, a writer-director whose second film Alcarras tells the story of the Solo family, peach farmers who are being evicted from their land in the titular area of Spain.
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Will
Alcarras won the Golden Bear at Berlinale and is now in UK cinemas before releasing internationally on movie later in the year. And just a note, this conversation was recorded for Zoom. So apologies for any quality issues. Hi Carla, how you doing?
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Carla
Good, thank you.
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Will
So I'm hoping that everyone listening has already seen Summer 1993. And if they haven't, it's currently on MUBI in the UK, so I highly recommend they go and see it. But I wanted to start off by talking about how that's kind of different to this film. Summer 93 has a very specific autobiographical feel to it. It essentially tells your childhood story right in a fictionalised way.
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Will
And I know that Alcarras draws on some of your family experience but isn't so autobiographical. So I wonder if we could start off by talking about that kind of transition of work.
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Carla
Yes. I mean, it's so close to me and to my family and carers, but it's not like the real Alcarras mainly because the plot is is fiction. But the truth of it is that my uncles live in Alcarras, a small village, and this is like my mum's family business. So I didn't grow up. I grew up in the village that is portrayed in Summer 1993, but I used to go and still go very often to Alcarras for Christmas and summer holidays.
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Carla
So just to spend time with my family. So it's a place that still for me, it was very important to investigate properly, to to be able to talk from the inside of this family. But but it was some somehow close to me and the plot, the political game when I when my father died and because it was the first time that I saw what would happen if one day these trees, you know, that they could be made.
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Carla
And there's a space that we all share as a family. These appear now because when you have a very new family, it makes you think, well, this kind of thing. And then and then even if my family still could be repeated, then I hope they will be for a long time because my cousin wants to do to keep here in the land.
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Carla
And I realised that this was something that was happening to many families that they have delayed the land because it's no longer sustainable nor as big as it used to be before. Because food, just to give a lot of money to the area, but now because the prices are changing all the time, it's important to live out of it now.
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Carla
So yeah, so the plot came more, but yeah, it's in this thing about my grandfather and then also talking a lot to my, my uncle and learning about what was happening in the area.
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Will
So I wonder, is there like an author avatar for you in in Alcarras? I know there's like I think it's one of the aunts, right? One of the three siblings comes from Barcelona, I think, to to the farm regularly. So is that kind of closer to you than the other characters?
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Carla
Well, this one would be closer to my mum because she left the village when she was 18 with my dad and they and then they went to live in this other village that it's portrayed in summer 1993. And and she goes there just from time to time. And it's funny because this character is portrayed by my sister, who obviously knows my mom and like he's a professional actor, so she's the only professional actors in the family casting.
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Carla
And I would say that if these guys that that I relate to, it would be mature enough with the teenager again because, you know, she's in this age where she starts discovering the other world, knowing and understanding that adult also make mistakes and and fight each other and this kind of things. And so I remember very well when I was like 12, 13, 14, that suddenly yeah, the perspective of the family for me tend to load.
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Carla
Then I had this like observational attitude to know that actually I relate to my, my desire to make films that way and also so yeah, so I like this guide because I feel I could be behave.
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Will
It's funny, I watched the film with my family over Christmas and it was interesting to see we would talk about it as an ensemble film, but then like, is there a main character or is there someone who you follow more who the audience kind of relates to? And I think it probably is Marianna Like for me, for us it was anyway.
00:05:27:11 - 00:05:48:14
Will
And I wonder if that's because of everyone. I think she gets the clearest emotional kind of journey in the film, that wonderful bit with the dance that she doesn't do at the end, you know, like, yeah, so much about it. It sort of ambition in that context. And I got to say, like, I think for me the, the big thing I like about your work is the, is the, the family story kind of focus.
00:05:48:18 - 00:06:08:16
Will
And I have a really big family. I have a kind of I have two sets of family. So my parents are divorced and both sides of the family are massive. And so it's it's great to see stuff like this, this moment of family bliss in Alcatraz, where they eat snails, I think. And yeah. Have a pool party. That's kind of.
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Will
Yeah, yeah. Very, very relatable. They're like all the eating and shouting at the table is very much a family thing to do. Yeah, yeah. And that's why, you know, I'm kind of interested in that. You have quite a lot of stuff that feels universal in those films, but also plenty of very specific stuff. And there's one thing that I was wondering or rewatching about not having much context on, which is about the Spanish Civil War background that comes up in Alcatraz.
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Will
And I wonder if you could speak on that. I particularly interested in as a song that recurs throughout the film, and I was wondering if that's related to that era. Is that specific to that?
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Carla
The song that the grandfather sings and then the. Yeah, no, it's older than the Civil War.
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Will
Okay.
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Carla
Yeah, it's actually it's funny because it was very hard to find if we wanted to, to find a song from the area, which was complicated because not many songs go from generation to generation have been kind of slow recorded. So when we ask them, there was not like, like a big consensus about which song we should put not so we ended up finding this one that was it was recorded recently only because the original was released.
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Carla
So it was only in the church, but then it kind of transformed to something else and became mega-popular. So, but we liked this song because it was an easy to sing and at the same time it doesn't have lyrics because it's this kind of lead that you make up while you're singing. Okay? So we end up like building the leaks through another song, which is called The Songs of Harvesting, Harvesting, not so songs that they used to do, thinking well, being the hope and and the song is very difficult to sing.
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Carla
So that's why we kind of mixed both. And in there many recorded lyrics for this one. Most though at the end it was a mix of both, but it's not like it didn't like The Beast, but it feels like this kind of so many different. Yeah, and the thing about the Civil War. Yeah, for us it was very important because you know, in the in Spain we haven't quite well the song cycle memory.
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Carla
No. And the end is still the Civil War. There are some in some places that are still female and still present. And this and calculating in the border between Catalonia and that is one which means that there were a lot of bad things. And you can still you know, you go around in the landscape and you can still find bunkers where they that they used in the Civil War.
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Carla
And so to be present in the landscape, immersing in the memory of the families and and because the ownership of the land has always been something that it's a problem, you know, like it's never a good fix. Not so that's where it makes sense to kind of, you know, recall something that, again, that happened during the Civil War that people invade.
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Carla
And then at some point this has to end because until when you have to kind of invade this kind of a context that we're the war now.
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Will
When I watch this film, I was struck by there's this kind of like free things going on. There's this political story about like the specific thing to do with the peach farmers. And then there's a subtext about in general, modernity and tradition, like in the way in which the young people are trying to work out where they're going to be like, are they going to be farmers?
00:09:38:11 - 00:09:57:03
Will
Are they going to go out and do other stuff? And they have a complex relationship with their family for that. And then there's just this emotional story underneath about family. And I liked how they all kind of into motivated each other. I guess I would say like I was struck the. Is it Roger Rodger? Yeah. He's the he's the son.
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Will
And cultivating his own weed on the farm is a very modern thing for him to do. And yet it is also a traditional thing. He's the one who grows the vegetables on the farm as well. Right? He grows the little like allotments. And I love that. That's kind of him trying to find his own path to that tradition via modernity.
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Will
Yeah. Yeah. Some interesting stuff in that.
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Carla
No, but it's funny that you say this like three lines, but for me, there's always a I have this theory that it's made for some when I to that you need to make films not that kind of go together and then you balance them. And in this case it was obviously the land one of the themes and then the family guy, you know, and then in the case of someone need the the beef of the girl and the the process of adoption and adaptation in this meal.
00:10:50:20 - 00:11:35:22
Carla
How not a thing was also like the family somehow that that was newly created not so so yeah so it was a way to kind of yeah and I always feel like what's more important not that it's like the big plot is the land and it has to kind of keep going. But for me, I think a lot of attention to so many dynamics because this with a lot, of course, you know so it's finding this equilibrium not with you are saying about the the women that this is that was very funny because when we show the film in India or well Paris, when they saw the film, the cornfield, they were really laughing because
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Carla
they knew that that would was in say no and because they all everyone the plan might want to trees in a cornfield. So this is something that that they've been doing for a long time now there's something to this because because Polish the police have drones so they know where it is. Yeah. Okay. It's getting more complicated now.
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Carla
But in any case, for me, it was interesting that Brazil was suggesting like like, yeah, you can even call it traditional or modern way of of growing vegetables because he from time to time, he talks about ecological and not and for me, this is the future. So if there is any hope on, you know, cultivate the land in a small family business or in this business or in a small in dinner and being respectful with the land with made ecological adequate or not.
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Carla
And in Spain where to to to do this transition mainly because it takes them. So a family that wants to go from traditional agriculture to a ecological agriculture, it takes about four or five years, which is really hard to, you know, to sustain if yeah, of course, you know, for like these years to not have any income, it's really complicated.
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Carla
But for me it's the future because it doesn't make sense that, you know, I mean, the climate change here, we still cultivate the land in like big companies that explore it. So that's why you have this aim to kind of not not use the the products. No, I don't know how you call it in English, but the the chemical.
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Will
Like pesticides, that kind of stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And of course you can't do that of weed because otherwise anyone ends up smoking it.
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Carla
So yeah.
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Will
Yeah. So I was thinking about what you were saying about having all the themes overlap and in summer night you free. One of my favourite recurring things is the the main character. Like her prayers,
