In February 2021, Carla Simon presented her second film in BerlinAlcaraz. A year-long journey has begun. Its debut ended with a historic Golden Bear and since then the film has been a box office success, garnering 11 Goya nominations and being chosen by the Spanish Academy to represent us at the Oscars. It’s on the Hollywood Oscars course for the current director, who has made a chain of visits to Los Angeles, New York and London to present the film to voters in Reykjavik, where tonight’s European film is. Awards are given where Alcaraz There are two awards up for grabs, including Best Picture and Best Screenplay.
Carla Simon’s presence in Iceland once again brings to the table an incredible year of Spanish cinema. The European Film Awards usually do not nominate Spanish cinema, except for Pedro Almodovar or famous directors such as Menazar or Coixet. Simon’s presence in a quintet that includes Ruben Ostlund or Lucas Dont shows that he is already one of the important authors of European cinema.
Carla Simon attends the press after the US tour and does not know where she got up. “We’re slowly getting closer to our time zone,” he jokes. He has his feet on the ground and knows that it’s hard to win in Reykjavik and it’s hard to be nominated for an Oscar. That’s why his mantra is “Always be aware of the madness that this is and how hard it is to get here.” “A lot of times you lose perspective. Everything went beyond what we expected and should always be appreciated. I have a baby now, I’m traveling as a family, I’m with my boyfriend, the baby, and all of a sudden we’re at the Empire State Building looking at the views of New York and it’s like, “Damn, we’re so powerful.” They are able to do this thanks to grace Alcaraz. That’s why you have to exercise so you don’t lose perspective when you’re in this frenzy where it seems like it’s normal to do all these things,” he adds.
He’s not nervous and tells us a dream he had last night to show it. “I dreamed that we were in a room with my production company, people from the team, and a man came in, an actor who I don’t know who he was, and he sang the list that did the first cut for the Oscars and Alcaraz He wasn’t there and I was like that for a minute, but then I thought, well, nothing is happening. It was a test of how I would feel if I didn’t make the cut and I realized that it didn’t affect me too much because the important thing is to make this trip. Also because I thought that I wouldn’t have to travel anymore and write the next project that I want in peace. “Obviously, we are fighting and fighting to be there, but the most important thing is that we make this trip,” he said.
The reception is good, and people in the US turn to the director to tell him their stories in the fields, picking grapes or photos of his family. “At the end of the day, everyone has a city,” Simon says, explaining the film’s connection to every country. Despite his enthusiasm, he reiterated that “there are 92 or 93 films competing in this category and it’s very difficult, so we’re trying to be on the first shortlist first.” A mission to which their presence at this European Film Awards can push: “The American distributors told us that it was very good to have these nominations, because it puts the film even more on the map and, above all, they are remembered because of what is happening. With the films coming from the Berlinale, they are so far away and that entity is forgotten, because then comes Cannes, Venice… and you have to make that effort to remember that the film is there.”
The way you shoot me is a bit against the universe right now, requiring you to constantly overproduce.
Carla Simon
– Film director
Hotels help him write a new project. “I find it very inspiring because they are very neutral places and when you go alone, what are you going to do, you start writing well, but now I go with my baby and there’s no writing in hotels,” she says. About this tour, which is shaping up to be a film, he wants to offer “something different, a challenge.” This will be because it breaks with “the realistic tone that I was committed to in the first two films, and in doing so, I see what happens when I use cinematic language in a slightly metaphorical or poetic way.”
It is clear that he will continue for as long as it takes to make things go well. A lesson he learned with Alcara, which means that instead of shooting in 2023, his third film will be shot in 2024: “If we want to do it well and my way, which is usually with time and slow production, it makes more sense to wait a year. Also because I just became a mother and there are things I don’t want to miss. The first thing I thought when we were given the Golden Bear was that it was worth doing over time. So that’s what I keep repeating to myself, and I have to keep repeating to myself, because it’s a way that’s a little bit against the world right now, which requires you to constantly overproduce. ”
In closing, Carla Simone gives her thoughts on the No. 1 controversy Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, Chantal Akerman’s film in a survey by the prestigious magazine Sight & Sound. The movie that changed Vertigo i Citizen Kane And this led to a machismo indignation, seeing a woman unknown to many take the gold from world cinema: “I don’t understand, this film is very, very important in the history of cinema. It is very, very difficult to say which are the ten greatest movies of all time. If you came out, it seems like poetic justice. I don’t know why they complain. It’s a shame it took them so long to figure it out.”
Source: El Diario
