Alcarràs
MUBI | Release Date: January 6, 2023 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
85
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 18 Critic Reviews
Positive:
18
Mixed:
0
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
82
Paste MagazineAnna McKibbinFeb 27, 2023
Simón’s first feature film, Summer 1993, was praised for her seamless blending of real life and fiction, crafting a sense of earned authenticity. Alcarràs accomplishes something similar. Read full review
90
Rolling StoneK. Austin CollinsJan 9, 2023
Simón refuses to allow Alcarràs to settle for being just one thing; she drifts between her characters’ moods with rare realism. Read full review
80
EmpirePamela HutchinsonJan 9, 2023
Carla Simón’s film is a tender peach itself. A lament for a world slipping out of reach is brought invigoratingly to life by a vividly drawn cast of characters. Read full review
83
The Film StageRory O'ConnorJan 6, 2023
Alcarràs appears simple, even slight at first, but is deceptively far-reaching; enough at least to have impressed a Berlinale jury led by M. Night Shyamalan (and including no less than Ryusuke Hamaguchi), who collectively awarded Simón the Golden Bear. Read full review
80
Little White LiesCaitlin QuinlanJan 6, 2023
The power of Alcarràs lies in the filmmaker’s care for and understanding of her subject which, as with Summer 1993, is a story taken from her own life and examined on screen with a deceiving charm that gives way to a deeply emotional narrative. Read full review
70
The Irish TimesTara BradyJan 6, 2023
An entirely non-professional cast makes it seem as if the director-editor Ana Pfaff and cinematographer Daniela Cajias simply happened upon every beautifully composed sequence. The effects can be slow-burning and occasionally a little shapeless, but they cast their dappled spell as the summer wears on. Read full review
88
RogerEbert.comCarlos AguilarJan 6, 2023
Amid tableaus of sundrenched landscapes, Simón’s instinct for eliciting naturalistic performances—displayed in her feature debut “Summer 1993"—marries a remarkably stealth narrative structure that lets us into the lives of these people, collectively and individually. Read full review
80
CineVueChristopher MachellJan 6, 2023
Director Carla Simón’s Alcarràs is at once a paean to family, community and a dwindling way of life, and a complex and heartbreaking study of the victims of progress. Read full review
100
Los Angeles TimesRobert AbeleJan 5, 2023
Movies about the people who grow our food, who struggle as honest land stewards in a time of heartless industry, are few and far between, making Alcarràs a rare gem. In its unforced, plaintive artistry, it nurtures to a palpable ripeness the beauty and burden in these all-too-hidden lives. Read full review
70
The New York TimesDevika GirishJan 5, 2023
The film’s striking images — a girl’s made-up face, sullen amid a crowd of colorful revelers; solar panels gleaming sinisterly below a full moon — leave an indelible trail. Read full review
80
The GuardianPeter BradshawJan 5, 2023
It is a deeply intelligent, humane drama. Read full review
91
The PlaylistRafaela Sales RossFeb 21, 2022
In its expert blend of vivid cinematography and naturalistic performances, Alcarràs creates a refined study of heritage that understands life’s permanent absence of resolution – with every hard-earned answer comes a new riddle. Read full review
63
Slant MagazinePat BrownFeb 17, 2022
As a tribute to farmers’ way of life, its effective and at times moving, but as an exposé of the potential losses that a business-centric green revolution is in the process of incurring, it wants for a stiffer punch. Read full review
83
IndieWireDavid EhrlichFeb 17, 2022
It’s a buzzing and vibrant ensemble drama whose unruly cast pulls our focus in a dozen different directions at once, but also one that always returns our attention to the earth shifting under their feet, and in turn to the question of who they will become once they’re forced away from it. Read full review
80
The Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneyFeb 16, 2022
Lovely, unforced Chekhovian notes grace the gently observed snapshot of a summer of unstoppable change and momentous upheaval. Even if there are moments of frustration in which Simón and co-writer Arnau Vilaró pull away just as conflicts are heating up, the film’s immersive, lived-in nature has a transfixing grip. Read full review
90
Screen DailyFionnuala HalliganFeb 16, 2022
This Spanish Garden of Eden hits some perhaps expectedly alluring notes - the ripeness, the colour, the endless days of summer - yet is also a profoundly authentic and moving contemplation of the fragility of family, and, again, childhood. Read full review
100
The TelegraphTim RobeyFeb 16, 2022
It manages a light, improvisatory mastery, an immaculate hold on tone, and a grave yet sunlit tableau of an ending, with each one of these faces turned in collective mourning, that I’ll never forget. Read full review
90
VarietyGuy LodgeFeb 16, 2022
The film balances a bristling political conscience against its tenderly observed domestic drama. Read full review
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