Berlinale | The Golden Bear awarded to the film Alcarràs

(Berlin) The Berlinale made the voice of the countryside and that of women heard by crowning the Spanish film Alcarras by director Carla Simón, in an almost exclusively female list.

By winning this prize, the 35-year-old filmmaker becomes the third young director in a row to be crowned by a major festival, after the French Julia Ducournau, Palme d’Or at Cannes for Titanium and Audrey Diwan, Golden Lion at Venice for The event.

If we add to this the triumph at the Oscars 2021 of the American Chloé Zhao, with nomadlandthese most prestigious awards in the cinema world seem to testify, five years after the start of the Weinstein affair, to a desire to rebalance within an industry long dominated by men.

In Berlin, the prize list is almost exclusively female, with a prize for the best achievement to the Frenchwoman Claire Denis for With love and determination and a “gender neutral” award for best performance to German-Turkish actress Meltem Kaptan.

The Golden Bear also sheds light on the future of agriculture and peasants, jostled by modernity. Alcarras is an ode to smallholders, which takes place over a summer in a corner of Catalonia bathed in sunshine.

The president of the jury, the American director M. Night Shyamalan, praised the performance of the actors who knew how to “show the tenderness and the fight of a family”, and to highlight “our dependence on the land”.

The director, who lost her parents very young and grew up near this small town of Alcarràs, thanked her family, “who grew peaches and without which (she) would never have been so close to this world”.

Carla Simón, who had already received a first film award in Berlin for Summer 1993 (2017), also dedicated its prize to “small farming families who cultivate their land every day to fill our plates”.

Uproot the trees

In Alcarrasit is this endangered world that invades the screen, all the more glaringly true as the actors are non-professionals, recruited from the surrounding area.

The film follows the Solé family, who for three generations have cultivated hundreds of peach trees on the land of wealthy landowners.

But the latter want to uproot the trees to install solar panels there, and propose to the Solé to adapt to this new situation, or to leave. The head of the family, Quimet, refuses to see his world disappear.

Around him is a whole fragile family balance, from children to the elderly, which threatens to collapse. The cast of non-professional actors is filmed with great tenderness.

The film is both moving and profound on the issues of the forced modernization of the countryside or the conflict between economy and ecology.

The director sees “hardly any future” for small family farms. “There is very little price regulation, and more and more big companies,” she explained in an interview with AFP on Tuesday. “I only see hope in organic farming,” she added.

Carla Simón succeeds Romanian Radu Jude, Golden Bear last year, after a week of competition at a brisk pace due to COVID-19.

The organizers can congratulate themselves on having, at the cost of drastic sanitary measures, brought the competition to an end after an ersatz festival, online only, last year.

The only downside: the absence of a big name in cinema, the Frenchwoman Isabelle Huppert, who was to receive a reward for her entire acting career. Declared positive for COVID-19 the day before, she had to give up the trip to Berlin.

The list of the main prizes awarded on Wednesday

– Golden Bear for Best Film: Alcarras by the Spaniard Carla Simón

Silver Bears:

– Grand Jury Prize: The Novelist’s Film by Hong Sangsoo

– Jury Prize: Robe of Gems by Natalia Lopez Gallardo

– Best Director: Claire Denis for With love and determination

– Best Performance in a Leading Role (non-gendered award): Meltem Kaptan in the film Rabiye Kurnaz vs. George W. Bush

– Best Performance in a Supporting Role: Laura Basuki in girl