Alcarràs

As we urbanize, we distance ourselves further and further from the small farm. Putting all those middlemen and greedy corporations between us and the farmer, causes us to pay outrageous prices for fresh food and the small farmers to become broke. As an urban dweller, we have no personal knowledge of the impact. This well-made film drives the impact home.

A family of long established and hard working peach farmers find their lives turned upside down when the owner of their land dies. It seems that there was a gentleman's agreement for this arrangement to continue down the generations, but when the wealthy son decides to sell the land to developers, there is no proof of that - and now "Quimet" (Jordi Pujol Dolcet) and his family must recalibrate their entire raison d'être whilst battling to bring in the harvest, ensuring their family doesn't implode and, simultaneously, resist the temptation to blame his elderly father "Rogelio" (Josep Abad) for their predicament. The actors don't come across as professional, but they do come across as natural - especially the young Albert Bosch ("Roger") as the teenage lad who is as committed to the land as his father, and Dolcet himself who manages to turn his character round from a determined, slightly obtuse, man into one who realises that this is not just his own, personal, challenge. The film is really about the demise of small-holding farming, and it's replacement by large scale industrial operations that deliver well for business and consumers alike, but pay scant regard to the families who have worked the land, traditionally and organically (both in scientific and the familial terms) for centuries. Much is often made about corporate greed in good looking, proud, films like this - but in the end I always think it is for consumers to insist on changes. So long as we wish to pay peanuts for our produce, then stories like this will continue until there is nobody left!