The Catalan film director cove simon (Barcelona, ​​1986) has been done with the National Film Award 2023, taking the baton from penelope cruz who took the award last year. This prize, awarded annually by the Ministry of Culture and Sports, is endowed with 30,000 euros.

The jury wanted to recognize the director and screenwriter Carla Simón “for positioning Spanish cinema on the international scene with the winning the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festivalone of the most prestigious in the world”.

This prize awarded to Simón by the German contest was “a milestone in the history of our cinema thanks to a film in which the naturalness and precision in the construction of stories and characters intelligently and rigorously combines realism and fiction with a fully topical to social problems. In addition, it organically incorporates the diversity of languages ​​that characterize and enrich our society and culture”.

The award-winning film in Berlin was alcarrásset precisely in this town in the province of Lleida where it values ​​the difficulties of the rural world, specifically those of a family of peach trees that has to face the installation of solar panels that could mean the end of their agricultural activity.

The representatives of the jury also wanted to highlight the youth and talent of Carla Simón “who represents a new generation of filmmakers who have managed in a very short time to develop quality cinema committed to the medium itself and to society, reaching a global audience”. Without a doubt -they add- “he is one of the benchmarks of the great moment that Spanish cinema is experiencing. At the same time, it has been able to promote the opening of movie theaters at a difficult time after the COVID pandemic.