30.06.18

Summer 1993 + Carla Simón talk

Curzon Bloomsbury / Carla Simón

Hosted by the curators and agency-for-change Birds’ Eye View The film is followed by an A&Q discussion with multi-award-winning writer/director Carla Simón and Mia Bays, producer of Oscar-winning and multi-BAFTA nominated films, who now runs Birds’ Eye View. 

Carla Simón’s debut feature, SUMMER 1993, produced by Inicia Films and Avalon, premiered at the Berlinale 2017 where it won the Best First Film Award and the Generation Kplus Grand Prix Jury Award. It also won the Golden Biznaga at Málaga Film Festival, the Jury Mention at Istanbul Film Festival, and the Best Direction Award at BAFICI, amongst others.

 

“A thoughtful and moving family portrait.” The Hollywood Reporter

 

A 6-year-old orphan goes to live with her uncle’s family in Carla Simón’s sensitive, understated autobiographical debut, SUMMER 1993. Striking a careful balance between narrative and atmosphere, the writer-director paints a vivid portrait of a light-filled summer when a little girl has to face the loss of her mother and integration into a new nuclear family. The film parcels out just enough information to satisfy attentive viewers, and though the main character is a moppet, it’s decidedly not a kids film, as acknowledged by the first feature jury’s top prize. Finding the right audience may be difficult, but this delicate sleeper is worth the effort.

“A delicate sleeper of a film that movingly looks at an orphaned six-year-old’s loneliness and confusion  without the usual dip into sentimentality.” Variety

 

Carla Simón grew up in a small Catalan village. After graduating in Audiovisual Communication at the Universitat Autonoma of Barcelona, she spent a year at the University of California where she made her experimental shorts “Women” and Lovers”, before moving back to Spain and completing an MA in TV Fiction.

Awarded with the prestigious scholarships of Obra Social “la Caixa”, Carla then moved to the UK to study at the London Film School. There, she wrote and directed the documentary “Born Positive” and the fiction “Lipstick”, both short films selected in numerous international film festivals. Her graduation project, “Las Pequeñas Cosas” received a Distinction and exhibited at several festivals internationally.

Summer 1993 UK trailer from New Wave Films on Vimeo.