The best antidote to the banality of some talk shows is a debate with people who know what they're talking about. For example, four people whom the deputy editor of Culture at ARA, Xavi Serra, invited on Tuesday to the Sala Laya at the Filmoteca to discuss the canon of 21st-century Catalan cinema, the list of 267 films published by the newspaper and which can be consulted in a magnificent and exemplary interactive. "An excellent dossier, an unprecedented initiative with a survey in which 200 experts have participated to make a possible canon," as Pablo La Parra, the director of the Filmoteca (where there will be a meeting with Carla Simón this Wednesday), said. The interactive, by the way, also shows the 200 votes (each of 10 films). "It's a beautiful way to discover films, debate and talk about our cinema," says Serra, who imagined Tuesday's meeting as "an extension of the survey" and an opportunity to specify some of the characteristics of Catalan cinema; such as the naturalism that connects with certain European auteur cinema and the fruitful relationship between the language of documentary and fiction.

The best antidote to the banality of some discussions is a debate with people who know what they are talking about. For example, four people whom the deputy director of Culture at ARA, Xavi Serra, convened on Tuesday in the Sala Laya of the Filmoteca to talk about the canon of 21st-century Catalan cinema, the list of 267 films published by the newspaper and which can be consulted in a magnificent and exemplary interactive. "An excellent dossier, an unprecedented initiative with a survey in which 200 experts have participated to make a possible canon," as Pablo La Parra, the director of the Filmoteca (where this Wednesday there will be a meeting with Carla Simón), said. The interactive, incidentally, also shows the 200 votes (each of 10 films). "It's a nice way to discover films, debate and talk about our cinema," celebrates Serra, who imagined Tuesday's meeting as "an extension of the survey" and an opportunity to specify some of the characteristics of Catalan cinema; such as the naturalism that connects with certain European auteur cinema and the fruitful relationship between the language of documentary and fiction.

"Black bread"Manel and Pep Guardiola," Carles Capdevila said in the early months of ARA. As the newspaper's director, he was trying to adjust his perspective. Black bread, the film by Agustí VillarongaIt had premiered on October 15, 2010, thirteen days before the birth of the ARA. The group Manel released their second album, 10 miles to see some good armorIn March 2011. And Pep Guardiola was coaching FC Barcelona, ​​which won the Champions League on May 28, 2011, in London, with goals from Pedro, Messi, and Villa. Fifteen years later, the director of the ARA, Esther Vera, could say: "Rosalía, Carla Simón, and Lamine Yamal." Leaving aside football, which permeates everything but isn't the material with which the Culture pages are written, between Capdevila's words and those Vera might endorse, there's a whole shift in the mainstream Catalan culture, in cultural manifestations that transcend the sectoral sphere. mainstream It's not necessarily the best-selling or most popular product, but rather everything that forms part of a broader social debate and can impact society. At its best, it can have added artistic value and generate contexts that enrich the country's culture.

After the apparent eclecticism of the Kosmopolis festival in bringing together a Galician writer in a single session, Berta Dávila, a Catalan filmmaker, Carla Simón, and a scriptwriter who is "proudly charnego", Eduard Sola, there was a theme that challenges all three of them: the creative exploration of the most intimate bonds, whether family, friendship or sentimental.

The family, as we know, is first-rate literary material; I would even say it's an inevitable inspiration. The family has largely made us who we are, and it makes us see the world in a certain way, sometimes to follow the line marked out for us, sometimes to flee or go against it.

In Lagoons, a short film prior to Summer 1993 (2017), Carla Simón recovers the letters and some videos of Neus Pipó, her mother, while traveling through the landscapes she traveled through decades before. The film ends at the Hospital del Mar, with the camera focusing on the horizon while we hear Neus's last wishes, who before dying names her brother as legal guardian of her daughter Carla. The beginning of Pilgrimage connects with that ending to fill in some of these gaps. Marina (Llúcia Garcia), a young audiovisual communication student, travels by sea from Barcelona to Galicia to obtain official recognition from her paternal family. The diary she wrote to her mother about her stay there serves as a guide.

Three Catalan productions have been shortlisted by the Spanish Film Academy to represent Spain in the race for the Oscar for Best International Feature Film: Pilgrimage of Carla Simón, Sirado ofOliver Laxe and Deaf Eva Libertad. The reading of the nominated films was conducted by two Spanish academics who are also members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences: actress Emma Suárez and actor Juan Diego Botto. They were accompanied by the president of the Spanish Film Academy, Fernando Méndez-Leite, and notary Eva Fernández Medina. Spain's representative at the last edition of the Oscars. was Second prize, which ultimately failed to achieve a nomination from the Hollywood Academy.

The diary of a mother of whom she has few memories is the map that Mariana (newcomer Lucía Garcia Torras) uses in Pilgrimage to explore the memory of her biological parents, who died of AIDS when she was a young child. The new film by Carla Simón, which premieres this Friday, examines the silences and taboos that persist in the memory of a Galician family through the inquisitive eyes of a teenager who makes a pilgrimage to the sacred land (where her parents were young and happy) in search of their legacy. But Pilgrimage It is also a bittersweet invocation of the wandering spirits of a cursed and massacred generation, a cinematic act of poetic justice and personal dignity.

In 2016, a year before directing Summer 1993, Carla Simón made a short film, Lagoons, based on texts from the letters she kept from her mother, Neus Pipó, who died of AIDS in 1993, and a fragment of a home movie in which a young and carefree Pipó appeared wiping the sleep from her ears. A decade later, having become the Catalan filmmaker of reference for a new generation of directors, Simón returns to her mother's letters, now transformed into phrases from her mother's diary that a teenager reads during a trip to Galicia to meet her father's family, who died when she was young, just like her mother. The desire to put images into the parents' love story and, above all, to know who those people were that she doesn't remember runs through Pilgrimage, Simón's third feature film, the latest installment in the extraordinary universe the director has built from her intimate family materials.

It is still beautiful that Carla Simón (Barcelona, ​​​​1986) present Pilgrimage At the Cannes Film Festival, she was more than eight months pregnant, or as she herself says, "very pregnant and ready for whatever may happen," because the film is a daughter's love letter to parents she lost too early and of whom she barely has any memories. The third film by the director ofSummer 1993 and Alcarràs accompanies a Catalan teenager with the desire to study film on her trip to Galicia to meet her paternal family and the places where her parents' love story took place. Pilgrimage, who speaks Catalan, Spanish and Galician, once again demonstrates Simón's extraordinary talent for capturing the rhythms of life and the secret language of families, but in the second half of the film he also opens a new door in his cinema, a freer and more fantastic one that abandons the strict realism of his previous films.

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.

Pilgrimage, the new film by Carla Simón, will be in the official competition at the Cannes Film Festival, the most illustrious section of the event and which allows you to fight for the Palme d'Or. The director ofSummer 1993, who once again draws inspiration from her family history to shape this story about a Catalan teenager who goes to Vigo to meet the family of her father, who died when she was little, will face the challenge of competing with the big names in modern cinema: the Dardenne brothers, Wes Anderson, Ari Aster, Richard Linklater, Sergei Loznits, and, who also debuts in the official section with Sirado, starring the villainous Sergi López and produced by El Deseo, Pedro Almodóvar's production company, about a father who, accompanied by his son, searches for his daughter in the mountains of southern Morocco.

Pilgrimage, the new film by Carla Simón, will be in the official competition at the Cannes Film Festival, the most illustrious section of the event and which allows you to fight for the Palme d'Or. The director ofSummer 1993, who once again draws inspiration from her family history to shape this story about a Catalan teenager who goes to Vigo to meet the family of her father, who died when she was a child, will face the challenge of competing with the great names of modern cinema: the Dardenne brothers, Wes Anderson, Ari Aster, Richard Linklater, Sergei Loznitsa. Also with the Galician Oliver Laxe, who debuts in the official section with the Catalan production SiradoStarring the villainous Sergi López and co-produced by Pedro Almodóvar's production company, El Deseo, the film follows the journey of a father who, accompanied by his son, searches for his daughter in the mountains of southern Morocco.

Alcarràs, 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

How to represent a family of farmers in the Lleida countryside? For Carla Simón there was only one possible way: with people from the area, who are close to the experiences portrayed in the flim Alcarràs, which arrives in cinemas today. The result, needless to say, is extraordinary. The work of the non-professional actors who play the Solé family has been acclaimed for the absolute naturalness they exude, not only individually, but also in capturing family rhythms and dynamics. The identification is such that, to this day, they still call each other by the names they used in the film: mum, dad, granddad...

Alcarràs

(5 stars)

Directed by Carla Simón. Script by Carla Simón and Arnau Vilaró. 120 minutes. Spain and Italy (2022). With Jordi Pujol Dolcet, Anna Otin and Xènia Roset In cinemas on April 29th

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Carla Simón has made history with Alcarràs, winner of the golden Bear for Best Film at the Berlin Film Festival. We will still have to wait until the end of April to see it in Catalan cinemas, but we already know a few things...

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"It's such a shock, this is crazy," says Carla Simón (Barcelona, 1986), who speaks to ARA a couple of hours after winning the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival with Alcarràs. The triumph is historic and consecrates her as the great Catalan filmmaker of her generation and one of the main young directors in European cinema today. Her career, fortunately, has only just begun.

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