Director Carla Simón’s film had its Australian premiere as part of the 2022 Sydney Film Festival, shortly after it won the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival. It’s taken a long time to get to general release, but Alcarràs is very much worth the wait.

A little girl wears sunglasses with one of the lenses missing. She drives an old blue car with two young boys in it.

A scene from Carla Simón’s film Alcarràs

Simón’s subject is an extended family of orchardists facing eviction from the farm they’ve held since the Spanish Civil War when the landowner gifted it to grandfather Rogelio (Josep Abad) as a reward for sheltering his family during the fascist purges.

No contract was signed when the land was handed over. A debt of honour required no such thing. But now, the landowner’s descendent wants it back so that he can rip up the peach trees and build a lucrative solar farm. 

Despite tending the dry Catalonian soils for decades and coaxing a forest of lush trees from them, Rogelio and his son Quimet don’t have a legal leg to stand on. Once the harvest is...