TRIBUTES AND RETROSPECTIVES

Carla Simón

Estiu 1993

Carla Simón
2017 - Spain - 1h37

Screenings : monday 22 - 10:15 am - Grand Théâtre thursday 25 - 10:30 am - Pathé - 1 - followed by a debate with the film director

Following the death of her parents, 6-year-old Frida leaves Barcelona for the countryside to live with her uncle and aunt and their 3-year-old daughter

“A story like this could easily have turned into a harrowing tear-jerker but, perhaps because it is inspired by her own childhood, Carla Simón (whose first feature film this is) instead shows great restraint. By going down to the level of the little girl, she remembers that the child's point of view is not necessarily the most pathetic; on the contrary, it can be the most distant, the most detached. Simón focuses on this moment, which here lasts the length of a summer, when the orphan has not yet taken in and formulated her misfortune. She sees that the adults hide to cry, she feels that at times she is embarrassing those who are doing their best to treat her like their daughter, she doesn't yet know how to distinguish the temporary from the definitive. (...) The film also owes a great deal to its young actresses, who are quite outstanding. Their precision is made possible by long sequences in which they seem to forget the camera in order to experience the moment as their characters do. The dignity and intense gaze of Laia Artigas (Frida) are reminiscent of Ana Torrent, the little girl in Víctor Erice's El espíritu de la colmena (The Spirit of the Beehive) (1973) and Carlos Saura's Cría cuervos (1976) (a tribute is paid to Saura's film in the scene where Frida dresses up as a woman to play mother to her cousin). Estiu 1993 (Summer 1993) belongs to this family of films, those in which childhood is not approached as a subject to be examined from an adult perspective, but as a way of perceiving and understanding the world. A form of distance from events, however intimate and dramatic they may be.” (Marcos Uzal; Libération)

CAST AND CREW

Cast : Laia Artigas, Paula Robles, Bruna Cusí, David Verdaguer, Fermí Reixach
Screenplay : Carla Simón
Cinematography : Santiago Racaj
Sound : Eva Valiño
Editing : Didac Palou, Ana Pfaff
Music : Pau Boïgues, Ernest Pipó

Production : Avalon, Fundación SGAE, Inicia Films

French distributor : Pyramide