'Alcarràs' selected to go to the Oscars

BarcelonaAlcarràs, by Carla Simón, will represent Spain at the Oscars. Thus begins the film's road to the Hollywood awards, which will be held on March 12, 2023 at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. The next step will be for Alcarràs to pass the cut of the North American Academy, which chooses nine pre-candidates in the Best International Film category. Simón has already lived this experience when Estiu 1993 was chosen as a Spanish candidate for the 2017 Oscars, but was then not among the nine chosen in January. It will be the third Catalan-language film to compete for an Oscar, after Pa negre in 2011 and Estiu 1993. "We really want to fight for the Oscar," Simón told ARA in an interview. After delivering the opening speech for Barcelona's Mercè festival, Simón will travel to the United States to present the film at the New York Film Festival, where she will officially start the Oscars campaign with the distributor Mubi

The other two pre-candidates were As bestas, a thriller by Rodrigo Sorogoyen, which was presented at the Cannes Festival and will be premiered at the San Sebastian Festival and then hit cinemas, and the drama about motherhood Cinco lobitos by debutant Alauda Ruiz de Azúa, which triumphed at the Malaga Festival, where it won Best Film and Best Screenplay, as well as Best Acting, a prize shared between Susi Sánchez and Laia Costa, who play a mother and daughter in the film.

Since it won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival, Alcarràs has been achieving other milestones, such as being one of the non-American films that has attracted the most spectators in cinemas in Spain this year and becoming the best premiere in Catalan in the last decade. It has also been shortlisted by some international magazines as a possible candidate to win the Oscar for best foreign language film.