Carla Simón, the filmmaker who made history by winning the Berlinale's Golden Bear with a film in Catalan, Alcarràs, has now achieved against all odds a new milestone: his film Pilgrimage has been selected to compete in the official section of the Cannes Film Festival.
With this film, Carla Simón closes her trilogy about family. Summer 1993 relived her childhood, when she lost her parents to AIDS and was adopted by her uncles; Alcarràs There was talk about belonging to a place and the importance of family unity, especially in times of crisis, and Pilgrimage The director takes up her own story: the film's 18-year-old protagonist travels to Galicia to meet her father's family, who died of AIDS when she was young.
Upon learning that it will compete at Cannes, Carla Simón confessed that the news surprised her, because it is a very personal work, without famous actors and about a topic that is not current. "That makes me think that they really liked the film," she concludes, with her usual measured tone but without hiding her satisfaction.
Apart from confirming the recognition of Simón's talent, I think the success of this trilogy serves to remind us all that Salvador Dalí's maxim "To become universal, we must start from the ultra-local" is still valid. When we saw him reciting "A small cock, a kitchen sink, a short leg, and a big ball...", Dalí was doing much more than attracting attention and appearing a bit crazy.
It's an idea I've always personally respected, as a creator and as a consumer of art. The closer and deeper you look, the more you'll find the most universal human emotions. The more you point out the peculiarities of a place, the more the story you tell everywhere will transcend.
Sometimes we all make the mistake of being seduced when a movie or a novel features an establishment on a specific street in a random neighborhood of a faraway city (how exotic and literary the streets of Kreuzberg, in Berlin, or the small towns on the coast of Maine, or the noisy squares) have reached us through literature or cinema.
The movie Pilgrimage, as expected, is filmed in Catalan, Spanish, and Galician. In this regard, too, Carla Simón paves the way for a natural approach. In this sense, the search for naturalness is a constant in her work, also when she explains that the protagonist's Galician family is reluctant to talk much about her deceased parents and their relationship with drugs. "Talking about the eighties and AIDS is also historical memory," says Carla Simón.
We must always remember, know, and rescue from oblivion. Individuals, to know who we are and why we are the way we are; and nations, for very similar reasons. But I deeply fear that the global trend is going in exactly the opposite direction: Carla Simón and so many others show us the way to avoid getting lost. To look back in order to move forward.
