Original title: Estiu 1993

Spain  –  Family Drama  –  Year: 2017  –  Running time: 97 mins
Languages: Catalan

Audience Response:

Rating: (4.48 from 27 responses)

• Excellent’: 18 votes
• ‘Very Good’: 6 votes
• ‘Good’: 2 votes
• ‘Satisfactory’: 0 votes
• ‘Poor’: 1 vote

Read the comments here or visit our “Summer 1993” discussion

Synopsis:

Following the death of her parents, six-year-old Frida leaves Barcelona and her grandparents for the countryside where she will now live with her uncle and aunt and their daughter Anna.  Exploring the unfamiliar rural world, she gradually gets to know her new ‘parents’, while still burdened by the trauma of her loss.  Establishing an evocative sense of time and place, this is a beautifully crafted film, winner of many awards.

In this semi-autobiographical period piece, Simón achieves the rare feat of faithfully recreating the mysterious consciousness of a child.
Peter Keough (Boston Globe)

Director: Carla Simón
Las pequeñas cosas (Short, 2015) / Lipstick (Short, 2013)
Cast:
Laia Artigas                                      …   Frida
Paula Robles                                    …   Anna
Bruna Cusí                                       …   Marga
David Verdaguer                              …  Esteve
Fermí Reixach                                 …   Avi
Montse Sanz                                   …   Lola
(for full cast, and more information, see “Summer 1993” in IMDB)

CFC Film Notes

Summer of 93 is the first full length feature written and directed by Carla Simon. She trained in film in both Barcelona and London and had previously made and exhibited at various festivals two short films; Born Positive (documentary) and Lipstick (fiction).

The film describes a summer as spent by a 6 year old orphan whose parents have died of AIDS and who has moved from Barcelona to her new home with her aunt, uncle and their own younger daughter in the Catalan countryside. The circumstances parallel Simon’s own experience as she too was orphaned at 6 after her own parents had died of AIDS.

The AIDS epidemic in Spain was drug fuelled. After the honeymoon period post Franco, a more hedonistic lifestyle took over and the drugs poured into Spain with little government intervention. Spain was the European country with the most deaths from AIDS, so Simon’s story was not unique.

This not however an autobiographical film as such, as Simon used her own memories, retold memories and childhood photographs to fashion the script, but there are invented scenes and Frida, the main character is not Simon. Directing the 2 main leads Frida and Anna, who were 6 and 4 years old respectively, meant of course that they could not be expected to read and work from a written script. Simon would get them to repeat certain sentences but the dialogue and conversations became adapted as they went along, but the storyline of the script was adhered to.

Simon has said that “You have to forget the fact that it is your story,” and block out the emotions. The film however is emotionally accurate in that Frida exhibits the way a child may react to death in a completely different way to a teenager or adult and doesn’t stop playing, laughing and having a nice summer. The common aspects of childhood everywhere are captured in the games and the fact that at her age Frida is more talked about then talked to.

Over the summer Frida learns to adapt to her new life and her new family. The country is a challenge to her and she finds nature both mysterious and estranging. She now also has a little sister and has to absorb this new responsibility and “sibling” rivalry, whilst the aunt and uncle have to also learn to love Frida as their own daughter. Both parties go through gamut of emotions to achieve a new fragile balance with the fact that Frida is there for ever.

Another element that Simon wanted to portray was the generational aspects of family life: the grandparents from the Catholic Franco era, their leftist children and then the next generation that would be a mixture of them both.

It is a portrait that captures both innocence and worldly experience. The film was a big success in Catalonia and also at the London Film Festival.

Selected UK reviews:

Observer (Wendy Ide)
The Arts Desk(Tom Birchenough)
Guardian (Peter Bradshaw)

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